Eifelheim

XIII. January, 1348 Rock Monday

The Monday after Epiphany — called Skirt Monday by the women, Plow Monday by the men — marked the end of the Christmas holy days. In most years, the men of the village contended in races to see who could plow a furlong the fastest but, with the ground snow-capped, the races were not held. But Skirt Monday went forward, and the women of Oberhochwald gleefully seized the men captive and held them for ransom. The name of the revel was a pun, for skirt and revenge sounded much the same on German tounges.

Dietrich tried, with little success, to explain the festivity to Hans and the other Krenken; but the delight of reversal escaped those bound to their estate by instinct. When Dietrich explained that on All Fools Day a gärtner would be chosen to rule as Herr for a day, they regarded him with incomprehension — and not a little horror.

Wanda Schmidt captured Klaus Müller and held him in her husband’s smithy to await a ransom that proved long in coming. Some said that it was a good match, for the miller and the smith’s wife were of a size and nearly of an equal strength. “Upper and nether millstone,” Lorenz joked as he was led away by Ulrike Bauer. “They’d grind away the likes of me between them.” The men of the village, for their part, sought capture by Hildegarde Müller. The miller’s wife, however, demanded only a donation toward the relief of the destitute. Trude Metzger took away Nickel Langermann — to the amusement of all, for no one had forgotten that she had paid merchet on herself.

A fight broke out when Anna Kohlmann captured Bertram Unterbaum. Oliver Becker, who thought himself entitled to that fate, knocked Bertram to the ground and bloodied his nose. But instead of running to the victor, as Oliver had no doubt imagined, Anna ran to the prostrate lad and cradled his head in her lap, earning herself years in purgatory by the names she called the baker’s son. Oliver turned pale and fled from her tongue, some said with tears of his own.

Later, when Jakob and Bertha could not find their son to fire the oven, they found that both he and his meager belongings had vanished, and Jakob cursed the young man as a bummer.

Dietrich feared that the lad would carry tales of the Krenken to Freiburg, but Manfred refused to pursue him. “In that cold, through those drifts? No, he was a fool to run off, and likely a dead fool ere long.”

At that rebuke, Dietrich knelt in church for three evenings thereafter, chastising himself that he had worried over his own safety, and not that of the distraught young man.

At tierce, on the commemoration of Priscilla of the Catacombs, the Kratzer summoned Dietrich and Lorenz to meet in Manfred’s hall with Hans and a third Krenk whom Dietrich did not know, and from whose girdle depended many curious tools. The Krenken spread across the banquet table parchments richly illuminated with intricate figures; though for all their fine precision, the execution was poor, lacking both the color and brilliance of French work and the wild exuberance the Irish. Vines lay at precise angles and bore curiously geometric fruit: circles and squares and triangles, some with writing. Joachim, he thought, even with his indifferent draughting hand, could easily execute a more pleasing illumination.

“This drawing,” Hans explained, “is a -. What do you call it when something goes forth and comes back to its starting place?”

“A circuit, as when Everard makes a circuit of the Herr’s estate.”

“Many thank. This circuit helps move our cog through the inward-curling directions to the other world. Or so the ‘servant of the essence’ has said.” By this, he indicated the third Krenk, who bore the name Gottfried. “His more cunning devices were ruined in the shipwreck and cannot be repaired, but this primitive one may serve in their stead. The essence runs from this point, the mover, out and back through a lattice of copper wires, and so animates our machines.

This essence is contained in… storage barrels, but these barrels grow ever more depleted from lack of the generative power. This may restore them.”

Dietrich stared at the illumination. “This device will speed your departure?”

Hans did not turn his head. “It may not serve,” he admitted, “but it must be tried or we will be ‘saved by the alchemist’.” At this, the Kratzer scissored his mandibles sharply and the servant of the essence stiffened. Hans bent over the “circuit.” Dietrich had noticed how the alchemist’s suicide had affected his strange guests. They had become more subdued, but also snapped frequently at one another.

“Is the essence that runs through the copper,” Dietrich wondered aloud, “an earth, water, air, or fire?”

Hans said nothing, so the Kratzer answered. “We call those the… ‘four seemings of a material.’ Fire, I suppose. It can burn.”

“That is because fire atoms are tetrahedral, with many sharp points. It must move very fast, that being an attribute of fire.”

Hans, who had been “reading the circuit,” raised his head from the illuminated manuscript at that and parted his soft lips in the krenkish smile. “Yes, very fast indeed.”

“Fire seeks always its natural position, to move upward to the fourth sublunar sphere.”

“Well, this sort of fire seeks a lower position,” Hans said. “Or ‘potency,’ I think you say.”

“Then it must partake also of water, which moves toward a lower sphere — though fire and water, being contrary, do not easily mix. So, your fire-water must then flow through the copper channels as water flows through mill races and moves Klaus’s mill wheel from potency to act. Do these fruits on your vines signify machines? Ja? But to move a machine needs a strong current. The height of the dam is of great importance, since the greater the drop, the greater the work performed.”

“The potential drop in this circuit is very great,” said Gottfried, the servant of the essence, “as is the current. We have secured the remainder of the ingot left with the Freiburg smith. It will not encompass all repairs, but will suffice to build this device.”

“What?” said Dietrich. “That was to be the man’s payment!”

Hans tossed his arm. “Our need is greater. The ‘bug’ that traveled with you told us where his shop stood. We flew down at night and retrieved it.”

“But that is theft!”

“That is survival. Are goods not distributed according to need, as you read from your book?”

“Distributed, not taken. Hans, the natural arrogance of your people has led you from the Way. You see a thing and, if you want it and you have the power, you take it.”

“If we remain here, we die. Since life is the greatest good, it requires the greatest effort; so to work toward our escape cannot be called inordinate.”

Dietrich started. “But life is only the greatest of corruptible goods, so it is not the greatest good of all, which we call God. To desire what another possesses is to love yourself more than you love the other, and that is contrary to charitas.”

But Hans only tossed his arm. “Joachim has sketched you accurately.” Then he turned to the smith. “Lorenz, can you draw copper finely enough?”

“Copper wants a colder fire than iron,” Lorenz said, “and then it is only a matter of piercing dies of the proper size.” He grinned at the expressionless Krenk. “No worry. I will start work once Venus is ascendant.”

“Venus…” Hans cocked his arm in a gesture indicating uncertainty.

“That planet is favorable for copper-working,” the smith answered to the Krenken’s evident puzzlement. “Since copper came first from Cyprus,” he added helpfully.

Manfred gave his grace to the enterprise with marked reluctance, not because he expected little success but because he feared too much. “If this cog of theirs is restored,” he confided to Dietrich afterward, “the Krenken will steal away, for I doubt Grosswald understands an oath of fealty. When it suits his convenience, he will discard it without a qualm.”

“Being in this very different from mankind,” Dietrich said.

And so Lorenz drew the ingot into wire, and Gottfried arranged it on a board that mimicked the pattern on the “circuit” drawing using a magic wand. When he touched a spool of dull gray metal with the wand, the metal flowed and dripped upon wire and pin alike, turning instantly solid once more and binding the one to the other. Metal-workers used such “plumbing-metal,” but needed fire to make it flow, and Dietrich saw no sign of a fire. The wand, when Gottfried allowed him to touch it, was not even warm.

The work required a jeweler’s touch and, when something had not been done precisely right, Gottfried would cuff his apprentices or engage in a scuffle with Hans. Even among Krenken, Gottfried was noted for his choler.

The Krenk worried over the ‘unclothed’ nature of the wire, but his meaning remained occult, as no German word signified the clothing. When the “circuit” was ready at last, Gottfried tested it with a device he wore on his belt and — after much discussion with Hans, the Kratzer, and Baron Grosswald — pronounced himself satisfied.

The next day, an indifferent snowfall littered the still air. The party gathered in the Burg courtyard. Gottfried, bundled in furs, strapped a flying harness on, from which hung in a protective sack the device he had built. His much-abused apprentice, Wittich, would carry Lorenz to the ship in a sling. The smith had begged the boon of watching; and Baron Grosswald, at Herr Manfred’s urging, had consented.

Dietrich prayed a blessing on their efforts, and Lorenz knelt upon the icy flagstones and drew the sign of the cross over his body. Before climbing the tower from which the fliers would depart, the smith embraced Dietrich and gave him the kiss of peace. “Pray for me,” he said.

“Close your eyes until you are again on solid land.”

“I don’t fear height, but failure. I’m no copper-smith. The draw is not so fine and regular as Gottfried had asked.”

Dietrich remained at the base of the tower while the others climbed the narrow, spiral stairs to the top. Just around the bend of the spiral, the two Krenken tripped on the stumbling blocks. Hans, who had stayed behind with Dietrich, commented on the mason’s evident lack of skill.

“But no,” Dietrich said. “The stumble-steps are so attackers climbing the tower ‘trip up.’ The stairs spiral right-handwise for similar reason. Invaders cannot wield their swords; while the defenders, fighting downward, have a full swing.”

Hans shook his head, a gesture he had acquired from his hosts. “Your ineptness proves always cunning.” He pointed skyward, though without tilting his head back. “They go.”

Dietrich watched the fliers until they had become dark specks. The sentries on the walls pointed, too, but they had seen such flights now many times and the novelty of the feat had begun to fade. They had seen even Max Schweitzer fly, though with indifferent success.

“Blitzl has no little optimism,” Hans said.

“Who is Blitzl?”

Hans pointed toward the fliers as they vanished into the woodland. “Gottfried. We call those who follow his craft ‘Little Lightnings.’ During thunder-weather great bolts of the fiery fluid cross our sky, and Gottfried works with smaller versions of the same spirit.”

“The elektronikos!”

A Krenk’s face could not show astonishment. “You know of it? But you said nothing!”

“I deduced its likelihood from philosophic principles. When your cog failed, a great wave of elektronikos washed across the village, creating no small havoc.”

“Give thanks then that it was but a ripple,” Hans told him.

It was difficult to reconstruct afterward what had happened. Gottfried was in another apartment of the vessel and did not see. Perhaps Wittich had spied a loose wire and sought to adjust it. But while he handled the unclothed wire, Gottfried opened the sluice gate, allowing the elektronikos to pour through the channels — and through Wittich, seeking, as fluids did, the lowest ground.

“Lorenz siezed Wittich’s arm to pull him away,” Gottfried told Manfred’s inquest afterward, “and the fluid coursed through him as well.”

Like old Pfrozheim, Dietrich thought. And Holzbrenner and his apprentice. Only stronger, as if a torrent had washed the man away. Man’s days are like grass, he thought, the wind blows over him and he is no more.

“The man Lorenz did not know what would befall when he touched Wittich,” Grosswald asked. He sat by Manfred and Thierry on the judge’s bench since the affair involved his folk.

Gottfried said, “He saw that Wittich was in pain.”

“But you knew,” Grosswald insisted.

The servant of the essence made the tossing motion and all could see the burns on his hands. “I moved too late.”

Baron Grosswald ground his forearms slowly together. “That was not why I asked.”

After Lorenz’s poor burned body had been laid to rest, and Dietrich had given Wanda what comfort he could, Gregor came to the parsonage to offer his own condolences, “since the two of you were so close.”

“He was a pleasant and gentle man,” Dietrich said, “good to talk to and always with the air of more left unsaid. A friendship is shallow, I think, if everything between two men can be said. I’m sure there were things he wished to tell me, but there was always time for them later. Now, there is no ‘later.’ But Wanda’s grief must be the harder.”

Gregor shrugged. “She liked him well enough, but they lived as brother and sister.”

“So! I hadn’t known. Well, Paul commended such a life in his letters.”

“Oh, she took no vow of celibacy, not so long as Klaus Müller could visit. As for Lorenz, he seemed disinclined, Wanda being Walküre enough to daunt any man’s ardor.”

“Klaus Müller and the Frau Schmidt!”

Gregor smiled knowingly. “Why not? What joy does Hilde bring to the miller’s bed?”

Dietrich could not contain his astonishment. While Hildegarde Müller’s wantonness was well known, he had not expected the same of Wanda, a woman by no means comely. He remembered how, on Rock Monday, Lorenz had compared his wife and Klaus to the upper and nether millstones. Had the smith known of, and perhaps tolerated, his wife’s infidelity?

Fra Joachim came breathless to the door. “You are needed in the church, pastor!”

Alarmed, Dietrich stood. “What’s wrong?”

“Gottfried Krenk.” The young man’s cheeks, red from the cold, glowed on his pale face. The dark eyes flashed. “Oh, surely, no name was more wonderfully chosen! He has embraced Jesus, and we need you to perform the baptism.”

Gottfried awaited by the baptistery, but Dietrich took him first into the sacristy and spoke to him alone. “Why do you choose baptism, friend grasshopper?” he demanded. No sacrament could be valid if its meaning was not understood. Baptism was a matter of will, not water.

“Because of Lorenz the Smith.” Gottfried rubbed his forearms slowly, a gesture which Dietrich had concluded meant thoughtfulness, although the precise rhythm of the rasps might indicate irritation, confusion, or other sorts of thought. “Lorenz was an artisan, as am I,” Gottfried said. “A man of low besitting, to be used as those above him would. ‘In justice do the strong command; in justice do the weak submit.’”

“So the Athenians told the Melians,” Dietrich said. “But I think our word ‘justice’ and yours do not signify the same thing. Manfred cannot use us as the Baron Grosswald uses you. He is limited by the customs and by-laws of the manor.”

“How can this be?” the Krenk asked, “if justice is the lord’s will?”

“Because there is a Lord above all. Manfred is our lord only ‘under God,’ meaning that his will is subordinate to the higher justice of God. We may not obey a bad lord, nor follow an unlawful command.”

Gottfried grasped Dietrich’s arm, and Dietrich tried not to flinch from the horny touch. “That is the very thing! Your Herrenfolk have obligations to their vassals, ours do not. Lorenz used his own life to save Wittich, and Wittich was only a… One who labors at whatever is needful, but without the special skills of an artisan.”

“A gärtner. But if Lorenz saw that Wittich was in pain, naturally, he tried to help.”

“But it is not among us natural for the greater to help the lesser. An artisan would not help a mere gärtner; not without… Without your charitas to move him.”

“To be fair,” Dietrich said, “Lorenz did not know his life would be forfeit.”

“He knew,” Gottfried said, releasing his grip. “He knew. I had warned him against touching the wires when they were animate. I told him the fluid could strike a man like lightning. That was how he knew Wittich’s peril. Yet he had no thought to stand by and watch him die.”

Dietrich studied the Krenk. “Nor had you,” he said after a moment.

Gottfried tossed his arm. “I am Krenk. Could I do less than one of you?”

“Let me see your hands again.” Dietrich took Gottfried by the wrists and turned his hands up. The krenkish hand was not like a man’s hand. All six fingers could act as thumbs and they were long compared to the palm, which consequently appeared no bigger than a Thaler gold-piece. The passage of the fiery fluid had left a burn on each palm, which the krenkish physician had treated with an ungeant of some sort.

Gottfried pulled his hands away and snapped his side-lips. “You doubt my words?”

“No,” said Dietrich. The black marks had seemed much like the stigmata. “Have you the love of God in your heart?” he asked abruptly.

Gottfried imitated the human nod. “If I show in my actions this next-love, then I have it inside my head, not true?”

“’By their fruits you shall know them,’” Dietrich quoted, thinking of both Lorenz and Gottfried. “Do you reject Satan and all his works?”

“What is then this ‘satan’?”

“The Great Tempter. The one who always whispers to us the love of self rather than the love of others, and so doing seeks to turn us from the good.”

Gottfried listened while the Heinzelmännchen translated. “If when I am beaten,” he suggested, “I speak inside my head — think — of beating another. If when something of mine is taken, I think to take from another to replace it. If when I take pleasure, I do not ask the other’s consent. Is this what you mean?”

“Yes. Those sentences are spoken by Satan. We seek always the good, but never may we use evil means to achieve it. When others do evil to us, we must not respond with further evil.”

“Those are hard words, especially for the likes of him.”

All voices spoken through the Heinzelmännchen sounded alike, but Dietrich realized that another had spoken. He turned, and saw in the doorway Hans. “Hard, indeed,” Dietrich told the servant of the talking head. “So hard that no man can hope to follow. Our spirits are weak. We succumb to the temptation to return evil for evil, to seek our own good at the expense of others, to use other men as means to our own ends. That is why we need the strength — the grace — of our Lord Jesus Christ. The burden of such sinfulness is too great for us to carry alone, and so He walks by our side, as Simon the Cyrenian once walked beside Him.”

“And Blitzl — Gottfried — will follow this way? A Krenk well known as a brawler?”

“I will,” said Gottfried.

“Are you such a weakling, then?”

Gottfried exposed his neck. “I am.”

Hans’ horn lips spread wide and his soft lips fell open. “You say so?” But Gottfried rose and strode to the sacristy door, passing close by Hans to emerge on the altar. Dietrich looked at his friend. “He will need your prayers, Hans.”

“He will need one of your miracles.”

Dietrich nodded. “We all do.” Then he followed Gottfried to the baptistery.

“Baptism,” he told the Krenk beside the copper basin, “is the washing away of sin, just as ordinary water washes away dirt. One emerges from the water born again as a new man, and a new man needs a new name. You must choose a Christian name from among the roll of saints who have preceeded us. ‘Gottfried’ is itself a good name—”

“I would be called ‘Lorenz’.”

Dietrich hesitated at the sudden pain in his heart. “Ja. Doch.”

Hans laid his hand on Dietrich’s shoulder. “And I would be called ‘Dietrich’.”

Gregor Mauer grinned, “May I be godfather?”