Eifelheim

XIV. February, 1348 Candlemas to the Ember Days

Candlemas Day was a work holiday. At primes, the villagers gathered on the green and Joachim distributed candles to all, including the two baptized Krenken. The other Krenken stayed to themselves or watched from the edge of the green with fotografic devices. Dietrich blessed the candles while Joachim sang the Nunc dimittis. When all was ready, they formed up in procession. Klaus and Hildegarde took their accustomed place immediately behind Dietrich, reminding Dietrich irresistibly of the parable about those who would be first.

Chanting the anthem, Adórna thálamum tuum, Sion, Dietrich led the river of light through the early dawn, along the high street and up the hill toward St. Catherine, where he spied Theresia kneeling in the damp grass beside the church. But as the procession drew nearer, she stood and ran off. Dietrich’s tongue stumbled and nearly lost its place in the anthem, but he sang the line obtulérunt pro eo Dómino as he passed through the church doors, as was customary.

Later that day, a faint yodel echoing off the Feldberg announced the approach of a horseman. The Krenken hid themselves at Manfred’s request and did not emerge until the horseman, a messenger from the Strassburg bishop, departed on a fresh horse an hour later.

Berthold had summoned the lords of the Elsass and the Breisgau to meet at Benfeld on the eighth and discuss unrest in the Swiss. “I will be gone a week or more,” Manfred told the ministeriales summoned to his hall. “Too many lords will attend to hope for anything shorter.” Naming Ritter Thierry burgvogt in his absence, and dispatching Bertram Unterbaum to the Swiss to bring back a report, Manfred and his retinue departed the next day.

Rumors swirled in his wake. It was said that Berne had put some Jews on the pyre in November over the well-poisonings, and had written to the Imperial Cities to urge the same action on them. Strassburg and Freiburg had done nothing; but in Basel, the people rioted and, although the council banished the most notorious Jew-baiters from the city, they compelled the council to banish the Jews, and place them in protective custody on an island in the Rhine.

Dietrich complained to those who had gathered at Walpurga Honig’s cottage to drink her honey-wheat beer. “The Pope commands we respect the persons and property of the Jews. There was no cause for such treatment. The pest never reached the Swiss. It went up through France and into England.”

“Perhaps,” Everard suggested, “because Berne’s swift action scared the poisoners off.”

Berne actually found the poison, it was said. Everard had heard it from Gunther who had overheard the bishop’s messenger. A concoction of spiders, frogs, and the skin of a basilisk had been sewn into thin leather bags that Rabbi Peyret of Chambery gave to the silk merchant Agimet to drop into wells in Venice and Italy. Had he not been captured on his return, he might have done the same in the Swiss.

Dietrich protested. “His Holiness wrote that the Jews cannot be spreading the pest for they themselves die.”

Everard tapped a finger aside his nose. “But not so many of them as of us, eh? Why do you suppose that is? Because they bob up and down while they pray? Because every Friday they air their bedding out? Pfaugh. Besides, the kabbalists despise their fellow-Jews as much as they do us. They’re as secretive as masons and won’t allow other Jews to study the hidden writings.”

And “hidden writings” might be anything. Devil-spells. Recipes for poisons. Anything.

Klaus said, “We should place a guard around our own well.”

“Maier,” said Gregor, “we have here no Jews.”

“But we have them.” And Klaus pointed to Hans, who, though he drank no beer, squatted among them for the tallk. “Just yesterday I saw the one called Zachary standing by the well.”

Gregor snorted. “Do you hear what you are saying, man? Standing by the well?”

Nothing was ever settled when men complained over steins of beer; and Hans said afterward, “I see now how a folk can worry themselves into agitation.” Then, after further thought, he added, “Should they try to banish Krenken as they did Jews, I cannot answer for the outcome.”

On St. Agatha’s Day, Dietrich recited the Mass alone. There were the sick and lame to pray for. Walpurga Honig had suffered a kick from her mule. Gregor’s older son, Karl, was laid up with a fever. And Franz Ambach had asked prayers for the repose of his mother, who had gone to her reward this past month. Dietrich asked also the intercession of St. Christopher for Bertram’s safe return from Basel.

He gave thanks, again, that the pest had gone to England and not to the high woods. It was sinful to take joy from the suffering of others, but Oberhochwald’s good fortune was annexed to it, and it was in that annex that he took joy.

“Meménto étiam, Dómine,” he prayed, “famulórum famularúmque tuárum Lorenz Schmidt, et Beatrix Ambach, et Arnold Krenk, qui nos praecésserunt cum signo fídei, et dórmiunt in somno pacis.” He wondered if that were true about the krenkish alchemist. He had certainly died with a “sign of faith” clutched in his hands, but self-murder was normally a bar to heaven. Yet God moved no tragedy but that some good might come of it, and, seeing how affected the visitors were by their companion’s death, many of the Hochwalders who had before been wary or fearful of the Krenken, now greeted them openly and, if not warmly, with less marked hostility.

As he put the sacred vessels away, he thought to go by Theresia’s cottage. Lately, he had invented reasons for pausing there. Yesterday, she had told him about Walpurga’s leg and that she had set the bone. Dietrich had thanked her and waited for her to say more, but she had dipped her head and closed her window shutters.

She must by now know that she had been wrong about the Krenken. Recalling his own terror upon first sight, it was easy to forgive Theresia her more lingering dread. She would admit her error to him, she would return to the parsonage and do his chores, and in the evenings, before she returned to her cottage at the base of the hill, they would eat sweet-cakes together as they always had beforetimes and he would read to her from De usu partium or the Hortus deliciarum.

He found her arranging some herbs for drying by the glass light in her window. These herbs, she had grown in clay pots set on the sill. She bobbed to him as he entered, but continued cutting. “How goes it by you, daughter?” Dietrich said, and she answered, “Well,” and Dietrich searched for something to say that did not sound like an admonition.

“No one attended Mass today.” But that was an admonition, for Theresia had attended daily.

She did not look up. “Were they there?”

“Hans and Gottfried? No.”

“Fine new communicants you have admitted.”

Dietrich parted his lips to debate the point. After all, few ever attended the daily Mass. But he thought better of it and commented instead on the warming weather. Theresia shrugged. “Frau Grundsau saw no shadow.”

“Herwyg says it will be another cold year.”

“Old One-eye feels the cold more each year.”

“Do… Do your herbs prosper?”

“Well enough.” She paused in her labor and looked up. “I pray for you each day, father.”

“And I for you.”

But Theresia only shook her head. “You baptized them.”

“They desired it.”

“It mocked the sacrament!”

Dietrich reached out and took her by the sleeve. “Who has been telling you such things?” But Theresia pulled away from him and turned her back.

“Please leave.”

“But, I—”

“Please leave!”

Dietrich sighed and turned to the door. He hesitated a moment with his hand on the latch, but Theresia did not call him back, and there was nothing for it but to close the door behind him.

Manfred returned from Benfeld on Sexagesima, morose and taciturn and, when Dietrich came to the manor house, he found the Herr thoroughly drunk.

“War can be honorable,” Manfred said without preamble, after Gunther had closed the door of the scriptorium and the two were closeted together. “A man puts on the cloth of war and his opponent also, and they meet on a field agreeable to both, and they use the tools of war, such as have been agreed upon, and then… God defend the right!” He saluted with a goblet, drank it dry, and filled it again from a flagon of neat wine. “God defend the right… Drink with me, Dieter!”

Dietrich accepted the cup, though he only sipped from it. “What befell at Benfeld?”

“The devil is loose. Berthold. Lacks all honor. Flies with the wind. A bishop!”

“If you would have better bishops, let the church choose them, and not kings and princes.”

“Let the Pope choose, you mean? Pfaugh! There would be French spies in every court of Europe. Drink!”

Dietrich pulled a chair across from Manfred and sat. “How has Berthold driven you to this intemperance?”

“This,” Manfred filled his cup, “is not intemperance. It’s what he’s not done. He’s lord o’ Strassburg, but does he lead? A few lances would’ve settled things.” He smacked the table with the flat of his hand. “Where is that Unterbaum boy?”

“You sent him to the Swiss to learn the true state of affairs.”

“That was on St. Blaise’s Day. He should be back by now. If that gof has run off -.”

“He’d not run from Anna Kohlmann,” Dietrich answered mildly. “Perhaps the road delays him. He took great pride in wearing the messenger’s cloak. He’d not lightly throw it over.”

“It makes nothing,” said the Herr in sudden swing of temperament. “Learned all ’n Benfeld. Y’know what happened in the Swiss?”

“I heard the Basler Jews were gathered up for banishment.”

“Would they had been banished. Mob stormed th’ compound an’ set it afire, so… All died.”

“Herr God in heaven!” Dietrich half-stood, crossing himself.

Manfred gave him a sour look. “I’ve no love for usurers, but… there was no charge, no trial, only th’ mob run wild. Berthold asked Strassburg what they intended regarding the Jews, and th’ councilors answered that they ‘knew no evil of them.’ An’ then… Berthold asked th’ burgomeister, Peter Swaben, why he’d closed th’ wells and put th’ buckets away. By me, that was mere prudence, but there was great outcry against Strassburg’s hypocrisy.” Manfred emptied his cup again. “No man ’s safe when the mob runs loose, Jew or no. Wants only a grudge — as well you know.”

At that reminder, Dietrich drained his own cup and it shook as he replenished it.

“Swaben an’ his council stood fast,” Manfred continued, “but the next morning, th’ minster bells ’nounced a procession of the Cross-Brothers. Th’ bishop detests them — all th’ better folk do — but he daren’t speak while th’ vulgar favor them. They — Drink, Dietrich, drink! They marched two-by-two, the flagellants did, heads bowed, somber habits, cowls thrown up, bright red crosses front, back, cap. Up front, walked their Master, an’ two lieutenants with banners of purple velvet and cloth of gold. All this in utter silence. Utter silence. Unnerved me, that silence did. Had they shouted or danced, I might’ve laughed. But that quiet awed everyone who saw, so th’ only sound was th’ hissing breath of two-hundred brothers. I thought it some enormous serpent, winding through th’ streets. In th’ minster-place, they chanted their litany, and I could think of but one thing.”

“And what was that?”

“How bad th’ poetry was! Hah! Th’ cursed melody entangles m’ thoughts. I need Peter Minnesinger to exorcise it. Wish I’d laughed, now. Might’ve broken the spell. Cathedral chapter all ran off, naturally. Two Dominicans tried to halt a procession out near Miessen an’ were stoned for their troubles, so who dares oppose’m now? I was told Erfurt closed its gates against them, and Bishop Otto suppressed them in Magdeburg. An’ th’ tyrant of Milan erected three hundred welcoming gibbets outside the city walls, and the procession went elsewhere.”

“The Italians are a subtle folk,” Dietrich said.

“Hah! At least Umberto had a spine. The brothers stripped to the waist an’ processed slowly in a circle ’til, at the Master’s signal, the singing stopped and they threw themselves prostrate on the ground. Then they rose and whipped themselves with leather straps while the three in the center kept a tempus, so that th’ smacking proceeded in unison. Meanwhile, th’ crowd groaned and shivered and wept in sympathy.”

“The brotherhoods were less quarrelsome in the beginning,” Dietrich ventured. “A man required his wife’s permission to join -.”

“Which I suppose many were all too happy to give, hah!”

“- and provide four pence a day to support himself on the road. He made a full confession, vowed to neither bathe nor shave, nor change clothes nor sleep in a bed, and to maintain both silence and chastity regarding the other sex.”

“A serious vow, then; though a hairy, malodorous one. And all for thirty-three days and eight hours, I was told.” Manfred’s brow creased. “Why thirty-three days and eight hours?”

“One day,” Dietrich told him, “for each year of Christ’s life on earth.”

“Truly? Hah! I wish I’d known that. None of us could cipher it. But th’ old leaders have all died or quit in disgust. Now, th’ Masters claim to absolve from sin. They denounce mother Church, revile th’ Eucharist, disrupt th’ Mass, and drive priests from their churches before looting them. They enroll women now, and one hears that some vows are no longer held so dear.” Manfred tilted his cup, swirled the remnants of his wine, and sighed. “I fear the curse of sobriety is overtaking me… The flagellants heard of the council’s obstinancy and ran wild through the Jewish quarter, drawing the townsmen after them. The Strassburgers rioted for two days, deposed Swaben and his council, and installed another more to their liking. In the end, the bishop, lords, and Imperial Cities agreed to expel their Jews. On Friday the 13^th, the Strassburg Jews were taken up, and led the next day into their own cemetery into a house prepared for them. Along the way the crowd jeered and threw offal and ripped their clothes to find any concealed money, so that many were almost naked when they arrived.”

“An outrage!”

Manfred stared into the dregs of his cup. “Afterward,” he said. “Afterward, the house was fired, and I am told that nine hundred Jews perished. The mob looted the synagogue where they held their secret rituals, and found the horn of a ram. None knew its purpose, and it was supposed a means to signal the enemies of Strassburg.”

“Oh, dear God,” said Dietrich, “that was the shofar. To celebrate their holy days.”

Manfred refilled his cup. “Perhaps you should’ve been there to educate them, but I don’t think they were in a humour for learned discourse. Lover-God, I would gladly kill nine hundred Jews, if they came at me under arms and properly girded for war. But to burn them all… Women and children… A man of honor protects women and children. Disorder cannot be tolerated! If a man is to be relaxed to the pyre or the headsman, let it be after a proper inquisition. Men must be ruled! That was Berthold’s sin. He truckled to them when he should have sent his knights to trample them under their hooves. I tell you, Dietrich, this is what befalls when the low-born impose their will! Give us lords like Pedro of Aragon or Albrecht von Hapsburg!”

“Or Philip von Falkenstein?”

Manfred stabbed a forefinger at him. “Do not try me, Dietrich! Do not try me.”

“What of the Jews who escaped?”

A shrug. “The Duke’s man named Hapsburg land as sanctuary, so I suppose now they will all heigh for Vienna — or Poland. King Casimir was said to have extended a similar invitation. Oh, hold,” Manfred said around a swallow of wine. He coughed and placed the goblet unsteady on the table. Dietrich snatched it before it could topple and spill its contents. “There’s to be a war.”

“A war? And you forgot until now to mention this?”

“I, am, drunk,” Manfred said. “One drinks to forget. The Freiburg guilds have determined to break Falcon Rock. The Falcon has fouled his own nest. His ward, Wolfrianne, ran off and married a Freiburger tailor. Philip captured the man, and when she came below the walls to plead for his release, her jealous guardian returned him to her — headlong from the highest battlement. The tailor’s guild demanded vengeance and the others will strike from solidarity.”

“And how does that affect you?”

“You know my mind on Falkenstein… But the Duke’s man promised aid to the Freiburgers. They bought their liberties from Urach with the Duke’s silver, and their prosperity is now Albrecht’s hope of repayment. Von Falkenstein robbed the Hapsburgs of one such payment.” Manfred nodded to Dietrich as if to remind him. “He’ll not lose another.”

“He’s called you out, then, for your knight-service.”

“As Niederhochwald,” Manfred said, “But I expect Markgraf Friedrich will join, too. Then… Hah! The lords of Oberhochwald and Niederhochwald will ride out together!” He drained his cup and turned the flagon bottoms-up to no avail. “Gunther!” he shouted, thowing the flagon against the door. “More wine!” Then, in a whisper to Dietrich, “He’ll bring th’ rot-gut, now he thinks I can’t taste th’ difference.”

“So,” Dietrich said. “Another war, then.”

Manfred, slouching in his high seat, flipped a hand palm up. “The French war was a fancy. This one’s duty. If success can’t be won now — with the Freiburg guilds, the Duke, and the rest combined — then it cannot be done at all. But Baron Grosswald will not commit himself.” He tossed his head toward the door and, by extension, toward the south tower, where the krenkish guests were housed. “I bespoke him on my return, and he said he’d not hazard his sergeants against Falkenstein. What use their magical weapons, if I can’t employ ’em?”

“The Krenken are few,” Dietrich suggested. “Grosswald wishes to lose no more of his band than he already has. The last of their children died yesterday. Surely he will face an inquest when he has won his way home.”

Manfred slapped the table. “So he trades his honor for safety?”

Dietrich turned on him in sudden fury. “Honor! Are the wars such a joy, then?”

Manfred shot to his feet and stood with his hands on the table before him, leaning a little forward. “A joy? No, never a joy, priest. At the wars, we must forever swallow our fears and expose ourselves to every peril. Moldy bread or biscuit, meat cooked or uncooked; today enough to eat and tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond or butt; bad quarters, tent for shelter or the tree branches overhead; a bad bed, poor sleep with armor still on our backs, burdened with iron, the enemy an arrow-shot away. ‘ ’Ware! Who goes there? To arms! To arms!’ ” Manfred gestured broadly with his empty Krautstrunk. “With the first drowsiness: an alarm. At dawn: a trumpet. ‘To horse! To horse! Muster! Muster!’ As sentinels, keeping watch by day and by night. As foragers or scouts, fighting without cover. Guard after guard, duty after duty. ‘Here they come! Here! There are too many — No, not so many — News! News! This way — That — Come this side — Press them there — Go! Go! — Give no ground! — On!’” The Herr arrested his motions, suddenly aware that his voice had risen and that he had been pacing and and waving his arms wildly and Gunther stood dumbstruck in the doorway. Manfred spun back to the table and took up his cup, looked inside, and placed it back empty. “Such is our calling,” he said more quietly as he fell back to his seat.

Silence lingered. Gunther replaced the wine flagon and carefully left. Then Manfred raised his head and speared Dietrich with his gaze. “But you’d know something of that, would you not?”

Dietrich turned away. “Enough.”

“You’ve friends among the Krenken,” he heard Manfred say. “Explain to them what duty means.”

At dawn, those serfs who owed service as messengers donned cloaks with the Hochwald arms and bore the news to the lower valley and to the knight-fiefs. From Church Hill, Dietrich watched the horses dance along the snow-filled roads.

The snow that had lain thick all winter around the manor, a barrier keeping at bay the turmoil beyond the woods, was melting. Already tracks had been trampled through it. The men who carried messages would carry also rumors, and odd tales about Oberhochwald’s guests would begin to circulate.

Two weeks to the day, on the first Monday in Lent, horses pawed at the mud below the castle walls and snorted bright vapors in the cool March breeze. Colorful, snapping banners marked the knights who had mustered from their fiefs. Armsmen checked weapons and hitched their burdens for the trek into the valley. Wagons creaked; donkeys neighed; dogs barked. Children shouted with excitement or kissed fathers who waited afoot with solemn faces. Women, steadfast, refused to weep. The expected summons had arrived from the Markgraf, and the Herr of Oberhochwald was going to the wars.

Manfred’s palefridus was raven-black and speckled over with white dots, as if lately bathed with soap. Its thick mane was parted on the left side of its neck, and its headgear splendidly decorated with the Hochwald colors. Hardly had Manfred mounted than it reared from joy, delighted at its master’s weight in its saddle. Two of Manfred’s hounds came running — behind the horse, ahead of it, behind it once more — leaping with excitement. They were trackers and they thought that this would be a hunt.

Manfred had covered his armor with a surcoat bearing his arms. His helm, slung behind his saddle for the journey, shimmered in the sunlight. His sword hilt was covered with gold. Around his neck he wore a strap with a horn shaped like a griffin’s talon that measured nearly half an armlength. Its thicker end flared into a bell and, where it tapered toward the tip, the device was decorated with pure gold and held in place with deerskin thongs. It was lustrous, like a precious stone, and when he blew on it, “it sounded better than all the echoes in the world.”

His body servant was less splendidly mounted and, for saddle, he used an old feedbag. Over his right shoulder he carried the Herr’s travel-bag, packed with the sundries of camp, and over his left, his lord’s shield, slung in piggy-back fashion. With the quiver also in his right hand and the spear tucked under the shield, he seemed more fearsomely armed than the man he served.

“It pleases,” Manfred said to Dietrich, who stood beside the black horse in the trampled muck of dirt and melting snow. “The Duke had called on me for six and a half men, and I dislike choosing which to send home early. They maneuver for the privilege, y’know, but never openly. Whoever receives the grace earns the enmity of his peers, and more often than not overstays his obligation rather than be thought cowardly. Now I can add the Duke’s half-man to the Markgraf’s half-man and so obtain a whole one.” He threw his head back and laughed, and Dietrich mumbled some response. Manfred cocked an eye at him.

“You think a jest unseemly? What else might a man do marching toward possible death?”

“It is no light matter,” Dietrich answered him.

Manfred slapped his gauntlets against the palm of his left hand. “Well, I’ll pray my penance afterward, as a soldier must. Dietrich, much as I would tend my manor in peace, peace needs the consent of all, while one alone may raise a war. I swore an oath to protect the defenseless and punish peace-breakers, and that includes peace-breaking Herrenfolk. You priests say to forgive your enemy, and that is well, or revenge follows revenge until eternity. But between a man who will stop at nothing and one who will hesitate at anything, the advantage is generally to the former. The pagans had right, too. It is a false peace to be overforgiving. Your enemy may read forbearance as weakness and so be drawn to strike.”

“And how do you determine the question?” Dietrich asked.

Manfred grinned. “Why, that I should fight my enemy — but fairly.” He twisted in his saddle to see whether his corps was yet assembled. “Ho! Eugen, to the fore!” The junker, astride a white Wallachian, galloped past the cheering assembly with the Hochwald banner planted in his stirrup.

Kunigund ran to Eugen’s horse and, having grabbed the check reins, cried, “Promise me you’ll come back! Promise!” Eugen begged a kerchief from the girl to wear as a favor. This, he tucked in his girdle, declaring that it would keep him from harm. Kunigund beseeched her father. “Keep him safe, father! You won’t let anyone harm him!”

Manfred leaned to touch Kunigund on either cheek. “As safe as my arm and his honor permit, sweetling, but all lies in God’s hands. Pray for him, Gundl, and for me.”

His daughter ran to the chapel before any could see her weep. Manfred sighed after her. “She listens overmuch to the minnesingers, and holds all farewells as in the romances. If I should not return,” he added, but the sentence dangled. Then, more quietly, “She is my life. I mean for Eugen to wed her, once he has won his spurs, and that he should protect Hochwald in her name; but should he… Should neither of us return… If that befalls, see that she weds well.” He turned his gaze on Dietrich. “I entrust her to you.”

“But, the Markgraf…”

“Graf Friedrich would keep her unwed, the longer to milk my land for his own pocket.” His face clouded. “Had the boy lived, and Anna with him… Ach! There’d be none to gainsay that woman were she my burgvogt! There was a wife worthy of a man! Half of me died when I heard the midwife’s wail. These past years have been empty.”

“Is that why you went off to the French wars?” Dietrich asked. “To fill them?”

Manfred stiffened. “Mind your tongue, priest.” He yanked on the bridle reins but, looking up, checked his turn. “Ho! What have we here?”

A clamor had gone up from the waiting knights and their attendants. Some in the encampment were pointing to the sky and cheering. Others shrieked in terror as five Krenken in flying harnesses settled like fallen leaves from the sky onto the horse-pawed field. They carried hand-held pots-de-fer strapped round their middles and long, slim tubes slung over their shoulders. Dietrich recognized Hans and Gottfried — and thought it passing strange that the Krenken had once seemed so alike to him.

Wails rose from those who, having come from remote holdings, had not yet seen a Krenk. A camp-follower from Hinterwaldkopf waved in the air a reliquary she wore round her neck. Others slipped off with fearful backward glances. Franzl Long-nose slapped some of the retreating camp-followers with his staff. “What, would ye run from a handful of grasshoppers?” he laughed. Some knights half-drew their swords, and Manfred called out in his battle-voice that the strangers were travelers from a distant land who had come to lend their aid with their cunning weapons. Then he added sotto voce to Dietrich, “My thanks for persuading Grosswald.”

Dietrich, who knew how ineffective his pleas had been, said nothing.

The familiarity with which the local garrison greeted the fresh arrivals quieted many. Some muttered about “welcoming demons,” but none of the country knights dared gallop off while their brothers from the Burg stood fast. When Hans and Gottfried knelt before Dietrich, drew the sign of the cross upon themselves, and prayed the priest’s blessing, the murmurs faded like water sucked into the thirsty earth. Reflexively, many of those who had shouted the loudest alarums also crossed themselves, and took heart, if not ease, from this sign of piety.

“What means this?” Dietrich asked Hans amidst the commotion. “Has Grosswald then consented?”

“We shall recover the copper wire stolen by von Falkenstein,” Hans said. “It may perform better than that which the blessed Lorenz drew.” One of the three unfamiliar Krenken tossed his head back and made some buzz of comment; but as the creature lacked a head-harness, Dietrich did not understand him and Hans silenced the fellow with a gesture.

Manfred, having donned his own harness, approached and inquired after their corporal.

Hans stepped forward. “We have come to honor Grosswald, mine Herr. By your grace, we will fly before the column and call back reports of Falkenstein’s doings through the far-speaker.”

Manfred rubbed his chin. “And be out of sight of the faint-hearts among us… Do you have the thunder-clay?” A Krenk stroked the satchel he wore strapped across his body and Manfred nodded. “Very well. It pleases. You shall fly a vanguard.”

Dietrich watched with mixed feelings the Krenken recede into the distant sky. The objections were two. The army would carry gossip on its breath, exciting a terrible curiosity; but a glimpse of Hans or his companions would give body to the whispers. On the contrary, Hans might recover the wire and so speed the krenkish departure. Ergo… The question would be determined by a race between the arrival of the curious and the departure of the Krenken. In answer to the first objection, rumors were surely abroad by now, so that the gossip of this army would add but little. But to the second objection, Dietrich saw no ready answer.

On the way to Church Hill, Dietrich passed by Theresia’s cottage and marked her face in the window opening. They locked gazes, and he saw again the numb, tearless ten-year old he had carried off into the woods. He stretched an arm out and perhaps something stirred in her features, but she pulled the shutters closed before he could ascertain what that something was.

Slowly, Dietrich let his arm drop and he took a few more steps up the hill, but, suddenly overwhelmed, he sat upon a boulder and wept.

Later that afternoon, Dietrich and Joachim fed the milch cow and the other animals pertaining to the benefice. The shed was warm from the heat of the beasts and rich with the odors of dung and straw. “It will please me,” Dietrich said as he forked silage into the manger, “when the Krenken have gone and Theresia resumes her duties.”

Joachim, who had taken the more noisome task of the chicken coop, paused and wiped the curls off his brow with the back of his hand. “Dietrich, you cannot grind a sausage into a sow.”

Dietrich frowned and leaned upon his pitchfork. The cow lowed. Joachim turned and scattered feed to the chickens. There was a distant sound of banging pots in the outbuilding.

“She was always like a daughter to me,” Dietrich said at last.

Joachim grunted. “Children are a father’s curse. My father told me that. He meant me, of course. He’d lost a hand in the Barons’ War, and it embittered him that he could no longer chop other men to pieces. He wanted me to take his place and be my uncle’s heir, but I wanted God to live in me, and butchery seemed an uncertain path to the New Age.” Dietrich twitched and Joachim nodded. “You taught Theresia charity, but when tried for the greatest charity of all she was found wanting. I have written it so in my journal. ‘Even Pastor Dietrich’s ward was tried and found wanting.’”

Dietrich shook his head. “Never say such a thing. It would hurt her. Say rather that ‘Pastor Dietrich was tried and found wanting,’ for I have always fallen short of the marks I have set.”

The Kratzer burst into the shed, buzzing and clicking and shaking a cook’s ladle. Dietrich jumped at the sudden intrusion and braced the pitchfork before him, but when he saw it was the philosopher, he pulled the head harness from his scrip and woke it.

“Where is Hans?” the Krenk demanded. “It is past time and my meal is unprepared.”

Joachim opened his mouth to answer, but Dietrich lifted a hand to stll him. “We’ve not seen him since morning,” Dietrich temporized. At this, the Krenk slammed a fist into the doorpost, said something that the Heinzelmännchen did not translate, and bounded from the shed.

Dietrich removed his head-harness and carefully put it to sleep. “So. He doesn’t know — which means that Grosswald did not send them.” He worried. Gschert had imprisoned Hans for snatching Dietrich from the dungeon of Schloss Falkenstein. What retribution might follow this new transgression?

By tierce the next day, Baron Grosswald had learned of the matter and barged into the parsonage, shoving the door so hard that it banged and recoiled from the wall. Dietrich, who was praying his office at the time, jumped from the prie-dieu, dropping his book of hours so that the pages bent on themselves.

“He will show me his neck when he returns!” Grosswald cried. “Why did Manfred allow it?” Shepherd and the Kratzer pushed into the room as well, the pilgrim-leader pausing to close the door against the February chill.

“My lord baron,” said Dietrich, “The Herr did not question your men’s presence at the muster because he had called upon you for your duty, and presumed, when they presented themselves, that it was at your will.”

Grosswald paced before the glowing fireplace in a curious springing step that, to Dietrich seemed much like skipping and yet which clearly signified great agitation. “Too many lost already,” he said, though not entirely to Dietrich, for Shepherd answered.

“Three to cold, and one of them child, before you even stir to… enter village. And since—”

“The alchemist,” added the Kratzer.

“Speak not his name,” Grosswald warned his chief philosopher. “I will not see another life thrown away — and in so futile a gesture!”

Shepherd said to him, “If Hans gesture futile, why we husband our lives?” Grosswald swung at her, but the Krenkerin fended the blow with a deft motion of her arm, much as a knight might parry a sword cut. The two then controlled themselves, but stared at each other in the off-center, sidelong manner their peculiar eyes allowed.

“Did you expect to eat of my lord’s largesse,” insisted Dietrich, “with no obligation in return? Has he not granted you food and shelter through the winter?”

“You mock us,” said Grosswald, shrugging off the hand that the Kratzer placed on his arm.

“I did not know that Hans could act contrary to your orders,” Dietrich said. “Is not obedience to one’s sitting is written into the atoms of your flesh?”

The Kratzer, who had thus far showed his agitation by shaking in place, threw his arm to bar Grosswald. “I will answer this, Gschertl.” Dietrich noted his use of the diminutive. Among grown men, it signified either endearment or condescension, and Dietrich thought the Krenken incapable of endearment.

“Our flesh-atoms,” the Kratzer said, “write for us an… appetite… for obedience to our betters. But as one who hungers may fast, so may we temper our hunger for obedience. We have a proverb that reads: ‘Obey an order, until you are strong enough to disobey.’ And another: ‘Authority is limited only by reach.” He bowed, a human gesture, toward Shepherd, who had gone to a corner of the room by herself.

“And much depends,” Shepherd said, “on man who give order.” Gschert stiffened for a moment, then bounded suddenly from the parsonage, the door banging on its hinges as he departed.

Dietrich said, “I understand,” as he went to close the door.

“Do you?” said Shepherd. “It wonder me. Could man fast forever, or would hunger in end move him to desperation?”

The next day, on the feast of St. Kunigund, a riot broke out among the Krenken. They raged against one another on the high street and on the muddy green, to the amazement of villager and garrison alike. Fist and foot and forearm dealt terrible wounds and raised a clatter like swordplay with dry wooden sticks.

Frightened Hochwalders took refuge in church, cottage, or castle, so that work languished. Dietrich cried Truce to the mob on the green, but the combat swirled about him like a stream around a stone.

Pursued by four others, Shepherd bounded past him and up Church Hill. Dietrich hurried after, and found the pursuers pounding upon the carved oaken doors of the church, scarring the figures with their serrated forearms. St. Catherine had sustained a wound never delivered by her Roman tormenters. “Stop, for the love of God!” he cried and interposed himself between the mob and the precious carvings. “This building is sanctuary!”

A terrible blow laid open his headskin and he saw sudden dark and pinprick constellations. The door opened behind him and he fell backward onto the flagstones of the vestibule, striking his already aching head against the stones. Hands seized him and dragged him inside. The door slammed, muffling the clamor of the mob.

How long he lay dazed, he did not know. Then he sat upright, crying, “Shepherd!”

“Safe,” said Joachim. Dietrich looked around the dim-lit church, saw Gregor lighting candles illuminating Shepherd and a number of villagers. The villagers had edged away from the Krenkerin, deeper into the building’s shadows. Joachim helped Dietrich to his feet.

“That was well-said,” the monk told him. “’Stop for the love of God.’ You did not debate your dialectic.” The pounding on the door had ceased and Joachim went to the peep-hole and pushed the shutter aside. “They’ve gone,” he said.

“What madness has seized them?” Dietrich wondered.

“They always were an ill-humored lot,” Gregor said as he raised the lamplighter to touch a candle high on the wall. “As arrogant as Jews or nobles. That’s twice they’ve beaten you.”

“Forgive them, Gregor,” said Dietrich. “They did not know what they were doing. I put myself between their fists and their target. Otherwise, they ignore us.” It was the estimative power of instinct, he guessed. From deep within the atoms of their flesh, the Krenken did not esteem humans as friend or foe.

Shepherd squatted upon the flagstones with her knees thrust over her head and her long arms wrapped around them. Her side lips clicked rhythmically, much as a person might hum to herself. “My lady,” Dietrich said to her, “what means this riot?”

“Need you ask?” the Krenkerin said. “You and Brown-robe cause it.

Joachim had torn a strip of cloth off the hem of his robe and tied it ’round Dietrich’s brow to staunch the blood. “We, the cause?” Joachim asked.

“Were it not for your native superstition, Hans does not turn natural order over.”

“My lady,” said Dietrich. “Hans acted for the common good — to recover the wire from Falkenstein. It is the nature of men, of all creation, to pursue the good.”

“It is ‘nature of all creation’ to do as told — told by authority, or told by nature herself. That is what ‘good’ man does. But Hans decides for himself what end is good, not in course of duties, not by orders from betters. Unnatural! Now, some say he act on orders — from your lord-from-sky, ‘whose authority exceed even Herr Gschert.’”

Joachim cried out. “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” Dietrich hushed him with a brusque gesture. “All authority is ‘under God’,” he told Shepherd, “else authority would have no limits, and justice would be only a Herr’s will. But, say on.”

“Now, is discord among us. Words run every way, like highspringers from pouncing swiftjaw, when they ought run in orderly channels from those-who-speak to those-who-listen. As you cannot imagine… celebration-inside-head… of knowing that one toils in one’s besitting, touching upward, downward, all sides, linked in Great Web, neither can you know lacking-within-us when Web is broken. The Kratzer compared it to hunger, but hunger is small thing…” She paused and buzzed softly. “…which one may bear with ease until it grows unbearable. But this lacking is to sit on bank of flood-swollen river with… with… your word is love-mate… with love-mates unreachable on farther side.”

“Heart-ache,” said Joachim unexpectedly. “The word you want is heart-ache.”

“Doch? Heart-ache, then.”

Gregor the mason had come to stand with them and, when he heard what Joachim had said, remarked, “They feel heart-ache, do they? It’s little enough they show it.”

“We have heart-ache for Web-wholeness,” said Shepherd, “and would swim angry river to restore it. We have heart-ache for nurseland — you say Heimat — and… and its foods.”

“But there are now heresies among you,” Dietrich guessed. “Grosswald says one thing; Hans says another. Perhaps you,” he suggested, “say a third thing.”

Shepherd raised her mask-like face. “Hans go against Gschert words, but fault is Gschert that he fail to speak those words. Gschertl make it seem that I too defy natural order, and mob, high and low, set upon me for that sin. But when two in discord, both may be wrong, Gschertl and Hansl alike.”

“Those who hold the middle ground,” said Gregor, “are often attacked by both camps. Between two armies is a dangerous place to graze your flock.”

“Discord,” Dietrich said, “is a grave wrong. We must strive always for concord.”

Joachim laughed. “’I come not to bring concord,’” he quoted, “’but discord. Because of Me husband will leave wife, children will leave parents.’ So do philosophers, playing games with words, lose sight of their plain meanings, which can be found always inscribed in the heart.”

“A bit of discord here, too,” said Gregor mildly.

Dietrich said to Shepherd. “Tell your folk that any who come to the church, or who go to Manfred’s court, may not be attacked, for it is the Peace of God that warriors may not attack women or children, peasants, merchants, artisans, or animals, nor any religious or public building, and by law and custom both, no one may strike another in a church or in a lord’s court.”

“And does this Peace serve?”

“My lady, men are by nature violent. The Peace is a sieve, and much falls through — though perhaps not as much as might otherwise.”

“House-wherein-no-blows-may-fall…,” Shepherd said in a voice which might have meant cynicism or wistfulness. “New thought. This building to grow crowded sure.”

Dietrich asked Thierry to put down the fighting, but the burgvogt declined. “I have here only the garrison,” he explained. “Five knights, eight sentries, two gatekeepers, and a towermaster. I will not expend them to pacify those… those creatures.”

“Why have you been left here, sir,” Dietrich demanded, “if not to preserve order?”

Thierry bore impertinence less patiently than Manfred. “Von Falkenstein is no man to idle while his enemies attack, and though he cannot strike Freiburg or Vienna, he is perfectly able to ravage the Hochwald. If he sallies, I will need every man hale, alert, and under arms. Should any Krenk flee here for sactuary, he will have it, but I will not police the fighting. That is Grosswald’s besitting, and I will not stand between him and his disobedient vassals.”

Discontent with this ruling, Dietrich borrowed a horse from the stables, and set off toward Falcon Rock, where he hoped to obtain Manfred’s intervention. The urge to press on warred with the need to pick his way carefully down the switchback along the side of the Katerinaberg and through the thickets and other obstacles in the gorge. He was still deep within the shadowed gorge when he heard a dull thump of thunder and saw a plume of dark smoke rise over the far end of the valley.

He arrived at Falcon Rock after nones, less weary in body than anxious in mind, and sought the Hochward banner in a sprawling camp of no particular order or arrangement. Noble emblems waved on all sides like the flags on a festival tree. Here, the double-eagle of the Hapsburgs; there, the golden sash of the Markgraf and the red and white bars of Urach. Elsewhere, each at its own bastion: the arms of the weavers, the silversmiths, and the other Freiburger guilds. Von Falkenstein had badly misjudged how long the guildsmen would tolerate his impositions. Now, the mechanics and shopkeepers had risen from their benches to pull the pebble from their shoe.

The camp servants were in great celebration and Dietrich saw the reason for it when he reached the head of the camp. The gates to Burg Falkenstein hung loose and the portal had collapsed, as if Sigenot had smashed it with his club. The clash of weapons and the shouts of men drifted faintly from above. The krenkish thunder-paste had forced an entry into the schloss, but the way was narrow and, notoriously, the “gap of danger” could be held if stoutly defended. Indeed, the rubble mound below the breach had gleamed in the late afternoon sun with the armor and fittings of men and horses.

Dietrich found the Hochwald tents at last, but the Herr’s pavillion was empty, his body servant nowhere in evidence. Manfred’s honor would have propelled him into the gap of danger and he might even now sleep among those gleaming dead. Dietrich re-entered the tent and, finding a divan crafted in the Turkish style, set himself to wait.

As evening deepened into night, the battle-sounds faded, signaling that the last of the “diehards” had been slain or taken captive. Arms and armor fell to the victor, so many knights fought to the death, less for love of his lord than to escape penury and shame. Attackers trickled back into camp, chivvying prisoners to be ransomed, and carrying the loot with which years of highway robbery had filled Falcon Rock.

Earlier Dietrich had, from boredom, found a book in Manfred’s baggage; but as it concerned falconry, it had done little to relieve that boredom, and he had found himself fretting instead over the copyist’s hand or the qualities of the illuminations. When when he heard the irregular tramp of hobnails outside, Dietrich put the volume aside and emerged from the tent.

Attendants had built the fire back up and Max the Schweitzer was settling his men about it. He straightened in surprise. “Pastor! What is loose? You’ve been wounded!”

Dietrich touched the bandage. “There is fighting in the village. Where is Manfred?”

“At the chirurgeons’ tent. Fighting! Was it that sally from the watchtower? We thought them fled toward Breitnau.”

“No, the Krenken battle among themselves — and Thierry will do nothing.”

Max spat into the fire. “Thierry is skilled at defense. Let Grosswald handle matters.”

“Grosswald is not least among the brawlers. It is for Manfred to decide.”

Max scowled. “He won’t like it. Andreas, take charge of the men. Come, then, pastor. You’ll never find the chirurgeon in this maze.” He set off at a brisk pace and Dietrich had to match his stride to keep up.

“Is he grievous hurt?” Dietrich asked.

“He took a blow that cost him a cheek and several teeth, but I think the chirurgeon can sew it back together. The cheek, I mean.”

Dietrich crossed himself and offered up a silent prayer for the Herr’s well-being. The man had been a strange and cautious friend for many years, peculiar in his humors and given much to contemplation since his lady had died, visceral in his tastes, yet not without depths. He was one of the few with whom Dietrich could discuss any but the most mundane matters.

But he had misunderstood. It was Eugen, not Manfred, who sat strapped into a chair in the chirurgeon’s tent. A dentator was removing the broken teeth one by one with a pelican, a French novelty but recently come into use. The dentator’s muscles bulged with the effort and Eugen stifled cries with every pull. The junker’s face was black from the blow it had sustained. Blood spattered his brow, chin, nose, and painted the teeth exposed by the open flap of cheek a hideous scarlet. His skull grinned through the wound. Nearby, a blood-spattered chirurgeon read from a dog-eared book while he waited.

Manfred, who stood by the chair to fortify the lad, noticed Dietrich’s arrival and, by signs, indicated that conversation would wait. Dietrich paced restlessly about the tent, his mission pressing upon him.

Nearby stood a stained table on which the chirurgeon customarily worked and, beside it, a basket of dry sponges. Curious, Dietrich bent to take one up, but the chirurgeon stopped him. “No, no, padre! Very dangerous, those.” His patois of French and Italian, revealed him for a Savoyard. “They are soaked with an infusion of opium, mandragora bark, and henbane root, and the poison, he may transfer to your fingers. Then…” He mimed licking a finger as if to page his manuscript. “You see? Very bad?”

Dietirch backed away from the suddenly malignant sponges. “What do you use them for?”

“When the pain, he is so great I cannot-a cut without a danger, I moisten the sponge to release her fumes, and hold it under the man’s nose — so — until he’s sleep. But…” And he held a fist out, thumb and little finger extended, and wagged it. “Too much of the fumo, he no wake, hey? But for the most grievous wounds, maybe better he die in peace than in torment, hey?”

“May I see your book?” Dietrich indicated the volume in the chirurgeon’s hands.

“He is-a called The Four Masters. He describe the best-a practice of the ancients, Saracens, and Christians. Masters of Salerno compile him many years ago — before the Sicilian famigliae kill all the Angevins. This-a book,” he added proudly, “he is a copy direct from the master’s copy, but I am add to it.”

“Finely done,” Dietrich said, returning it. “Does Salerno then teach chirurgery?”

The Savoyard laughed. “Holy blue! Mending wounds is an art, not a schola. Well, at Bologna is a schola founded of Henry de Lucca. But chirugery is for clever hands—” He wiggled his fingers. ” — not clever minds.”

“Ja, the name ‘chirurgeon’ is Greek for ‘hand-labor.’”

“Oho, I see you a scholar—”

“I have read Galen,” Dietrich ventured, “but that was many—”

The Savoyard spat on the ground. “Galen! At Bologna, de Lucca, he cut open the cadavers and see that Galen knows shit. Galen cut up only pigs, and men are not-a pigs! I myself was apprentice when first public dissection — oh, thirty year since, I think — my master and I, we makea the cuts while important dottore, he describe what he see for the students. Hah! We need no physician to tell us what we see with our eyes. Holy blue! You have the head wound! May I see her? Ah, she is deep but… Did you clean it with the vino as de Lucca and Henri de Mondeville command? No?” He dabbed at the cut with a rag moistened in wine. “Wine that has turned is best. Now, I dry the cut and bring-a the edges together as the Lombards do. La Natura, she make a viscous fluid to bind-a the edges without the needlework. I will wrap-a the wound with hemp, to draw off the heat…”

The dentator had by then finished his work and the garrulous chirurgeon took his leave to attend to Eugen’s cheek. The junker, sweating and exhausted from the work on his jaw and teeth, watched the approaching knife with something approaching relief. Knives he understood. The pelican had been too much like an instrument of torture.

“He will bear up,” Manfred said after he and Dietrich had repaired to the Herr’s tent. “The blow he took was aimed at me, so it is a scar he may wear with honor. The Markgraf himself remarked the feat and agreed on the spot that Eugen shall have his accolade. Your Hans performed a brave deed, too, which I will bring to Grosswald’s attention.”

“It is Grosswald’s attentions that are the cause of my errand.” Dietrich explained what had happened in the village. “One faction says that Hans did the proper thing, despite his master’s command. ‘To save us from the alchemist,’ is how they expressed it.”

Manfred, seated upon his camp chair, pressed his hands together under his chin. “I see.” He beckoned to his servant with a hand-flip and selected a sweetmeat from the tray thus proffered. “And Grosswald’s party?” He waved the servant toward Dietrich, who declined.

“They cry that Hans, by his disobedience, upset the natural order, and this they abhor above all else. I suspect other factions, also. Shepherd is wroth with Hans, but would use his faction to unseat Grosswald, whom she holds blameworthy for stranding her pilgrims.”

Manfred grunted. “They are as convoluted as Italians. How stood matters when you left?”

“Once they grasped the Peace of God, many of the low-born fled to St. Catherine or the Burg, to the frustration of their attackers, who will not risk your displeasure by violating sanctuary.”

“Well,” said Manfred, “I can’t say I like the natural order being upset, either, but Hans did me great service this day, and for my honor I would see him rewarded, not punished.”

“What service was that, mine Herr? Would it mollify Grosswald?”

“Grosswald is a man of uncertain humor.” Manfred checked himself, then smiled crookedly. “How accustomed to those creatures have we grown this winter, that I should think of him as a man. Hans and his Krenkl’n swooped upon the ramparts while all attention was on the breach, slew the archers there, then assaulted the bergfried and secured the treasure-hoard!”

“Mine Herr,” Dietrich said with sudden apprehension. “Mine Herr, were they seen?”

“Some in the camp saw them, I think — though only at a distance, for I cautioned them to remain hidden to the extent their honor permitted. The archers on the ramparts, naturally, saw them plain, as did the towermaster in the ‘murder hole’ above the gate. Him, they slew before he could pour the hot oil upon us, to the saving of many a life and horrible injury. Falkenstein’s men thought their lord’s demonic master had come for him at last, so their appearance sowed panic to our advantage. There will be stories, but that cannot be helped, and the demons may be thought Falkenstein’s, not ours.”

“There is a poetry in that,” Dietrich admitted, “that the legend he used to frighten others turned like a snake to bite the man himself.”

Manfred chuckled and and drank wine from a goblet partly filled with resins to impart a sweet perfume to the beverage. “The Krenk who carried the thunder-paste — he was called Gerd — performed most valiantly. He flew at night to the base of the gate tower and planted there the paste. On the morrow, he fired it at the moment Hapsburg fired his pots de fer, so that it would seem that the shots had wrought the damage. The Duke’s captain was sore amazed! Gerd used the far-speaker to accomplish this. By Our Lady, it seemed as if he spoke to the paste and it obeyed. Dietrich, I swear upon my sword that the line between clever art and demonic powers is a hair. Hans led his companions into the bergfried in search of the Hapsburg silver, slaying or wounding all who stood before them until the stairs ran like a river of blood — though most defenders fled on the very sight of them.”

Herrenfolk were notoriously prone to hyperbole over feats of arms. The human body could bleed a ghastly amount, but a few minutes casting sums would show the impossibility of “a river” of blood, especially if “most defenders fled.” “Did they find the copper?” he asked.

“Hans reasoned that the greatest resistance would lie toward the treasury, and so he attacked where resistance was greatest. But…” Manfred threw his head back and laughed. “For all his fine reasoning, Hans found your wire by merest chance. Falkenstein kept his lady’s quarters heated — a tiled stove, no less! — and our Krenkl’n were drawn toward it. The wire was there. Her husband had given her the copper, perhaps to fashion jewelry from it. I suppose you philosophers can make something interesting of the coincidence. Perhaps that reason has its limits.”

“Or that God meant for Hans to find it.” Dietrich closed his eyes and offered a brief prayer of thanks that the Krenken could proceed now with their repairs.

“But, hear,” said Manfred. “Lady Falkenstein had a body guard assigned her and, when the Krenkl’n broke into her room, he swung his sword and cut down Gerd with a single blow. And what did our little corporal do, but straddle his comrade and ward off the armsman while the others pulled the body free! First, he brandished a chair to parry a stroke, then he slung a bullet with his pot-de-fer that struck the man a glancing blow on his helm and rendered him senseless. Then, oh, valiantly done! He traced the cross over his enemy and withdrew.”

“He spared him, then?” Dietrich asked in wonder, knowing the krenkish choler.

“A wonderful gesture. And Lady Falkenstein screeching all the while for fear of the Nameless One. But she says now that her bodyguard made such an heroic fight that even a very demon was moved to recognize his valor.”

“Ach. So legends grow.”

Manfred cocked his head. “What better story than that both foes perform heroic deeds when they face each other? By all accounts, the man voided himself at the sight of Hans; but he stood and fought when he could have run. That man will regale his grandchildren with tales of how he traded strokes with a demon and lived — if the Duke does not hang him first. But, the Duke’s silver is secured — and on its way to Vienna with the Jews — and a troop of trusted men to guard it. The other prisoners are also freed.”

“God be thanked. Mine Herr, would you summon Hans and warn him of his lord’s anger?”

“Too late for that, I fear. Once I had secured the treasury for the Duke, I gave Hans leave to fly his slain companion to the krenkish crypts.”

Dietrich stood in sudden alarm. “What! We must hurry back then, before it’s too late.”

Manfred pursed his lips. “Sit yourself, pastor. Only a fool hazards that trail in the dark. Whatever dealing Grosswald has in mind has already been dealt. However, for my honor, if Hans has not been well handled, Grosswald will pay the fine!”

Dietrich was not certain that Manfred had the power to punish Grosswald, should Grosswald not will it. The Krenken had feared the winter’s cold; but their arrogance would warm with the weather, and their oaths might melt with the snows.

Dietrich slept indifferently well. He did not expect the truce among the krenkish factions to last, for their ways required submission, not balance. Their “Web” was one not of oaths and mutual obligations, but of authority and obedience, and arrived at less by the cognitive power of their wills than by the estimative power of their appetites.

The new moon had set and, between short-lived bouts of slumber, Dietrich had watched Orion and his hounds chase Jupiter. Now the hunters, wearied of the chase, were sinking below the Breitnau heights and the Dog Star, brightest of all stars, rested yellow upon the crest of the mountain. Dietrich had read from Ptolemy in the Paris quadrivium, and Ptolemy had described the Dog Star as red. Perhaps the Greek had been mistaken, or perhaps it was only a copyist’s error; but Hans had said that stars could change, and Dietrich wondered whether this were one example of the corruptibility of the heavens.

He shook his head. According to Virgil, the Dog Star portended death and disease. Dietrich watched it until it had dropped safely from sight, or until he fell asleep at last.