Eifelheim

2. Now: Tom

Tom Schwoerin was no hermit. He was the sort of man who liked company and, while hardly boisterous, he enjoyed a song and a drink, and there were clubs in town where he had once been a Known Man.

That was before he met Sharon, of course. It would not be fair to call Sharon a wet blanket, but she did put a damper on things. This is not entirely bad. Carbon rods are dampers, too, and to good purpose. There had been something frivolous about Tom before she took him in hand. A grown man ought not wear so much grease paint. Sharon put a stop to that, mostly, and some of her seriousness had rubbed off on him.

So Tom, when on the scent, could give a credible imitation of a hermit — albeit one with a more chatty disposition than most. He liked to make his ideas real, and this meant talking about them aloud. Sharon usually played the unwilling role of Ear — often very unwilling, as on that particular evening — but it was the talking that mattered, not the hearing. Tom would have talked to himself in a pinch, and sometimes did.

He knew quite well that he had been thrown out of the apartment. He was not especially alert to the subtle cues of human relationships, but it was hard to miss the old heave-ho, and a man need not be particularly sensitive to feel a little vexed over the matter. Visiting the archives really was the sensible thing to do when seen from the clear, cold heights of logic; but logic wasn’t in it.

The medieval collection in the Teliow Memorial Library had started with a small art collection, housed in a gallery decorated to resemble a medieval hall. There were some fine pieces there: triptychs, altar fronts, and the like. There followed: bibles, psalters and other incunabula, pipe rolls and cartularies, registers and estate papers, ledgers and accounts — the raw materials of history. Primary sources bought at auctions or found in troves or bestowed by tax-weary donors; never edited, never published, grouped loosely by source into folders, tied in stacks between pieces of heavy cardboard, and hidden away to await a scholar sufficiently desperate to wade through them. They had been lying in wait for Tom and had caught him fair.

Tom had prepared a list. He was not the methodical sort, but even he knew better than to dive headfirst into uncharted waters. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he did know what sort of thing he was looking for, and that was half the battle. So he scrutinized the contents of each carton, setting aside certain documents for more careful perusal. Along the way, he acquired stray bits of the trivium and the quadrivium, for he was the sort of man who cannot look up one thing without in the process finding half a dozen others things. In this manner, the sun grew long, and passed into evening.

Amidst the chaff already winnowed lay by that time but a single grain of wheat: A note in an 17th century index of episcopal court cases that, “de rerum Eifelheimensis, the matter of the baptism of one Johannes Sterne, wayfarer, had been mooted by the death through pestilence of all the principals.” This index had been compiled in part from an earlier 15th century index, based in turn on long-lost 14th century originals.

Not exactly hot on the trail.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead and contemplated surrender. He might have packed it in then, had it not been for a nudge from an unlikely direction.

“You know, Doctor Schwoerin,” said the nudge, “we don’t get many live ones in here.”

Paul on the Damascus highway could not have been more startled apprehending a sudden voice. The librarian, who had dutifully shopped cartons for him all night in silent obscurity, stood by table with the carton he had just finished braced against her hip. She was a fine-featured woman, decked with a long print dress and adorned by large, plain glasses. Her hair met behind her in a tight bun.

Lieber Gott, Tom thought. An archetype! Aloud, he said, “I beg your pardon?”

The librarian flushed. “Usually researchers phone their requests in. One of the staff scans it into the computer, charges the cost against the appropriate grant, and that’s that. It can be terribly lonely, especially at night, when all we do is wait for requests from overseas. I try to read everything I scan, and there’s my own research of course. That helps some.”

That was the nexus. A lonely librarian wanted a human conversation, and a lonely cliologist needed a break from his fruitless hunt. Otherwise, no words at all might have passed between the two of them that whole night.

“I needed to get out of the apartment for a while,” Tom said.

“Oh,” the young woman told him, “I’m glad you came. I’ve been following your researches.”

Historians do not normally acquire groupies. “Why on earth would you do that?” Tom said in surprise.

“I majored in analytical history under Doctor LaBret at Massachusetts, but differential topology was too tough for me; so I switched to narrative history instead.”

Tom felt much as a molecular biologist might upon encountering a “natural philosopher.” Narrative history wasn’t science; it was literature. “I remember my own problems with Thom’s catastrophe surfaces,” he ventured. “Sit down, please. You’re making me nervous.”

She remained standing hipshot, with the carton. “I don’t mean to keep you from your work. I only wanted to ask you…” She hesitated. “Oh, it’s probably obvious.”

“What is?”

“Well, you’re researching a village called Eifelheim.”

“Yes. The site is an unexplained void in the Christaller grid.” That was a deliberate test on Tom’s part. He wanted to see what she would make of it.

She raised her eyebrows. “Abandoned and never resettled?” Tom nodded confirmation. “And yet,” she mused, “the locus must have had affinity or it would never have been occupied in the first place. Perhaps a nearby site… No? That is odd. Perhaps their mines were depleted? Their water dried up?”

Tom smiled, delighted at her perception, as much as her interest. He’d had a difficult time convincing Sharon that there even was a problem, and all she’d come up with was a common cause, like the Black Death. This young woman at least knew enough to suggest local causes.

After he explained his problem, the librarian frowned. “Why haven’t you searched for information from before the village’s disappearance? Whatever caused its abandonment must have occurred earlier.”

He swatted the carton. “That’s why I’m here! Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”

She ducked her head to the storm. “But, you’ve never referenced Oberhochwald, so I…”

“Oberhochwald?” He shook his head in irritation. “Why Oberhochwald?”

“That was Eifelheim’s original name.”

“What!” He stood sharply, knocking the heavy reading chair backwards. It hit the floor with a bang and the librarian dropped her carton, folders skittering across the floor. She clapped a hand to her mouth, then stooped to gather them up.

Tom darted around the table. “Never mind those now,” he said. “It was my fault. I’ll pick them up. Just tell me how you know that about Oberhochwald.” Lifting her to her feet, he was surprised at how short she was. Sitting, he had thought her taller.

She pried her arm from his grasp. “We’ll both pick them up,” she told him. She set the carton on the floor and dropped to her hands and knees.

Tom knelt beside her, handed her a folder. “Are you certain about this Oberhochwald place?”

She stacked three folders into the carton and looked at him and he noticed that her eyes were large and brown. “You mean you didn’t know? I learned only by accident, but I thought you… Well, it was a month ago, I think. A brother in the theology school asked me to find a rare manuscript for him and scan it into the database. The name Eifelheim caught my eye because I had already scanned several items for you. It was a marginal gloss on the name Oberhochwald.”

Tom paused with several more folders in his hand. “What was the context?”

“I don’t know. I read Latin, but this was in German. Oh, if I’d only known, I would have sent you an e-mail about it. But I thought—”

Tom placed a hand on her arm. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you have it here? The manuscript the brother asked for. I need to see it.”

“The original is at Yale—”

“A copy is fine.”

“Yes. I was about to ask you that. We kept a copy of the pdf scan in our own database, and df-imaging comes in once a month and organizes the archives for us. I can call it up.”

“Could you do that for me? Bitte sehr? I mean, pretty please? I’ll finish this.”

He reached under the table to retrieve another wayward folder. Hot damn! Another blow struck for serendipity! He piled two more folders atop the ones he had. No wonder he hadn’t found any contemporary references to Eifelheim. It hadn’t been called Eifelheim yet. He glanced at the librarian, busy at the keyboard in her office.

“Entschuldigung,” He called. She paused and turned. “I haven’t even asked your name.”

“Judy,” she told him. “Judy Cao.”

“Thank you, Judy Cao.”

It was a slim lead, a loose thread dangling from an old tangle of facts. At some unspecified time in the 14th century a wandering Minorite named Fra Joachim had evidently preached a sermon on “the sorcerers at Oberhochwald.” The text of the sermon had not survived the centuries, but Brother Joachim’s oratorical fame had, and a commentary on the sermon had been included in a treatise on homiletics against witchcraft and devil-worship. A later reader — 16^th century to judge by the calligraphy — had added a marginal gloss: Dieser Dorp heißt jetzt Eifelheim. This village is now called Eifelhiem.

And that meant…

Tom groaned and laid the printout on the table.

Judy Cao laid a hand on his arm. “What’s wrong, Doctor Schwoerin?”

Tom batted the sheet. “I’ve to go back through all these files.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Oh well. Povtorenia — mat’ uchenia.” He pulled the carton closer to him.

Judy Cao took a folder from the carton and, eyes cast down, turned it over and over in her hands. “I could help,” she suggested.

“Oh…” He shook his head distractedly. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“No, I’m serious.” She looked up. “I volunteer. There’s always a lull on the server after twenty o’clock. The hits from California drop off and the early morning hits from Warsaw or Vienna don’t pick up until later. The math, I can’t do, but research and documentation… I’ll have to check these cartons in real time, of course; but I can also mouse around the Net.”

“I can run a search engine,” Tom said.

“No offence, Doctor Schwoerin, but no one can mouse the Net like a Master Librarian. There is so much information out there, so poorly organized — and so bogus — that knowing how to find it is a science in itself.”

Tom grunted. “Tell me about it. I run a search and I get thousands of hits, most of it Klimbim, which I’m damned if I can figure out how they made the list.”

“Most sites aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on,” Judy said. “Half of them are set up by cranks or amateur enthusiasts. You need to boole your searchstring. I can write a worm to sniff out not only citations of Oberhochwald, but citations of any key words associated with the place. Like…”

“Like Johannes Sterne? Or the Trinity of Trinities?”

“Or anything. The worm can be taught to screen for context — that’s the hard part — and ignore items that aren’t relevant.”

“All right,” Tom said. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll pay you a stipend from my grant money. It won’t be much, but it’ll give you a title. Research Assistant. And your name will go on the paper after mine.” He straightened his chair. “I’ll key you a special access code for CLIODEINOS so you can dump into my files whenever you find anything. Meanwhile, we -. What’s wrong?”

Judy pulled back from the table. “Nothing.” She looked away briefly. “I thought we might meet here periodically. To coordinate our activities.”

Tom waved his hand. “We can do that easier over the Net. All you need is a smart phone and a modem.”

“I have a smart phone,” she told him, tugging on the string that bound the folder she held. “My phone is smarter than some people.”

Tom laughed, not yet getting the joke.

The two cartons they already had on the table were as good a place as any to start, so Tom took one and gave Judy the other and they went through them, folder by folder. Tom was reading the same items for the second time that night, so he forced himself to concentrate on the words. Searching for “Oberhochwald,” his eyes were snagged by any word starting with an O — or even a “Q” or a “C.” The manuscripts were penned in a disheartening variety of hands; mostly Latin, but some Middle High German, a few French or Italian. A motley assortment, with nothing in common but their donors.

Three hours later, and two hours after Judy’s shift on the help desk had ended, his eyes red and his brain muzzy, Tom came up for air clutching a single manuscript page.

Judy was still there, and she had found one, too.

That Judy could read Latin surprised Tom. He found it curious that a Southeast Asian should be interested in the culture and history of Europe, although the converse would not have puzzled him in the least. So while Tom learned little about Eifelheim that night, you could not say he learned nothing. In fact, he was a little mistaken about Judy Cao’s interests.

“Moriuntur amici mei…”

While Judy read, Tom listened with his eyes closed. This was a trick of his whenever he wanted to concentrate on what he heard. By shutting down one information channel, he thought to heighten his attention on the other. However, he was never known to put his fingers in his ears when he wanted to see something especially clearly.

Tom once told me that we Germans keep our verbs in our pockets, so that the meaning does not “until the end of the sentence appear.” Latin can scatter words like candy at Fasching, trusting to its suffixes to maintain discipline. Fortunately, the medievals had imposed a word order on Latin — one reason the humanists detested them — and Tom had a bent for language.

“My friends are dying despite all that we do. They eat, but take no nourishment from their food, so the end draws ever closer. I pray daily that they not succumb to despair, Oberhochwald being so far from their homes, but face their Creator with hope and faith in their hearts.

Two more have taken Christ in their last days, which pleases Hans no less than me. Nor do they place blame with those of us that took them in, knowing well that our time, too, is coming. Rumors fly swift as arrows, and with as much harm, that the pestilence that gutted the southlands in the past year even now lays waste the Swiss. Oh, let this be some lesser ill that has come upon us! Let this cup pass us by.”

That was all. Just a fragment of a journal. No author. No date. “Sometime between 1348 and 1350,” Tom guessed, but Judy pinned it down more closely.

“Mid-to-late ’49. The Plague reached Switzerland in May of ’49 and Strassburg in July, which puts it at the edge of the Black Forest.”

Tom, reflecting that narrative history did have its points, handed her a second sheet. “I found this in the other carton. A petition for redress from a smith in Freiburg to the Herr Manfred von Hochwald. He complains that a copper ingot, left by Pastor Dietrich of Oberhochwald as payment for drawing some fine copper wire, had been stolen.”

“Dated 1349, Vigil of the Feast of the Virgin.” She handed the page back.

Tom made a face. “Like that pins it down… Half the medieval year was taken up by Marian feasts.” He made another note in his palmtop, tugged on his lip. There was something about the letter that bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “Well…” He gathered the hard copies together, stuffed them into his briefcase and snapped it shut. “The exact date doesn’t matter. I’m trying to learn why the place was abandoned, not whether its priest stiffed a local artisan. But, alles gefällt, I’ve learned the one thing that’s made this whole trip worthwhile.”

Judy closed one of the cartons and initialed the log printed on its lid. She gave him a brief glance. “Oh? What was that?”

“I may not be exactly hot on the trail; but at least I know that there is a trail.”

He left the library to find the night far advanced and the campus deserted and quiet. The classroom buildings blocked the traffic noises from Olney and the only sound was the soft rustling of the branches overhead. Their shadows writhed in the moonlight. Tom hunched his shoulders against the insistent breeze and headed for the campus gate. So, Oberhochwald had changed its name to Eifelheim… Why Eifelheim? He wondered idly.

He was halfway across the quadrangle when it suddenly hit him. According to the Moriuntur document the village had been called Oberhochwald right up until the Black Death swept through and wiped it from the Earth.

Why would a village that no longer existed change its name at all?