Eifelheim

V. August, 1348 The Feast of St. Joachim

Seppl’ Bauer delivered the goose-tithe on St. Mary’s Day: Two dozen birds, short and tall, white and dun and dappled, heads at all inquisitive angles, complaining and strutting with the unfeigned arrogance of the goose-clan. Ulrike, with her longish neck and undershot chin looking not unlike a goose herself, ran ahead of the flock and held the gate open while Otto the goosehound chivvied the birds into the yard.

“Five-and-twenty birds,” Seppl’ announced while Ulrike latched the gate. “Franz Ambach added an extra bird as a love-gift because you ransomed his cow from the Herr.”

“Give him my thanks,” said Dietrich with grave formality, “and to the others too for their generosity.” The levy on the goose-flock was fixed by custom and not by generosity, yet Dietrich always treated it after the manner of a gift. While he did much gardening of his own and owned a milch cow which he farmed to Theresia, his priestly duties precluded him from devoting his time to raising food; and so the villagers tithed of their own sustenance to maintain him. The remainder of his benefice came from archdeacon Willi in Freiburg and from Herr Manfred, in whose gift it lay. He pulled a pfennig from his scrip and placed it in Seppl’s palm. This, too, was a customary duty, which was why the young men of the village jostled for the privilege of delivering the tithe payments.

“I’ll put this against my second furlong,” the boy announced, dropping the coin into his own scrip, “and not use it to buy myself out of my duties, like some I could name.”

“You’re a frugal lad,” Dietrich said. Ulrike had joined them and stood now holding hands with the boy while Otto panted and his gaze darted from boy to girl with puzzled jealousy. “So, Ulrike,” Dietrich said, “you are prepared for the wedding?”

The girl bobbed. “Yes, father.” She would be twelve the next month, a grown woman, and the union of the Bauers and Ackermanns had been long in the planning.

Through arrangements comprehensible only to an ambitious peasant, Volkmar Bauer had organized a swap involving three other villagers, several furlongs, some livestock, and a bag of copper pfennigs, so as to settle the manse named “Unterbach” on his son. The trades had enabled both the Bauers and the Ackermanns to bring their plots together in a more compact arrangement. Fewer turnings of the plow-team, Felix Ackermann had explained with grave satisfaction.

Dietrich, watching the young couple depart, hoped the union would prove as loving for the couple as it promised to be advantageous for their kin. The minnesingers extolled the virtues of affection over calculation, and peasants ever mimicked the manners of their betters; yet men had a way of loving that which might prove profitable. Love stopped no king from shopping his sons or daughters. The daughter of England, Manfred had said, was resting in Bordeaux on her way to wed the son of Castile, and for no better reason than that the union would discomfit France. Likely, love stopped no peasant, either, however long and narrow his kingdom.

At least Seppl’ and Ulrike were no strangers to each other, as prince Pedro and princess Joan were. Their parents had arranged that, too, cultivating the affections between their offspring with the same patience with which they pruned their grapevines in hope of a future vintage.

Dietrich entered his yard, to the displeasure of the goose-tithe, and took a billet and a knife from the shed in the rear. He passed a greeting with Theresia, who was tending the beans in his garden, and, stunning a goose from the flock with the billet, he took it to the shed and tied it securely by the legs to a hook there. He slit the throat, being careful not to sever the spine lest the muscles contract and make the plucking more difficult. “I am sorry, brother goose,” he told the carcass, “that my hospitality — and yourself — has been so short-lived, but I know of some pilgrims who might be grateful for your flesh.” Then he hung the goose to bleed out.

The next day, the goose now plucked, butchered, and safely wrapped in a leather game-bag, Dietrich crossed to Burg Hochwald, where Max Schweitzer awaited with two jennets harnessed and ready. “Sweet enough riding for a priest,” the sergeant promised, offering him one of the horses. “The nag is as fat as a monk — and will stop to eat at every chance, so the resemblance is no happenstance. A good kick in the ribs will start her if she does.” He gave Dietrich a leg up and waited until the priest was settled in the saddle. “Do you know the way by now?”

“You’re not coming this time?”

“No. The Herr desires I attend to certain duties. Tell me you know the way.”

“I know the way. The kiln trail to the wind-fall, then I follow the blazes as before.”

Schweitzer looked doubtful. “When you see… them, try to buy one of those tubes they keep in their scrips. They pointed one at us that first time.”

“I remember. You suppose it a weapon?”

“Ja. Some demons kept their hands near their scrips while we are about. A wary man’s hand would hover near his scabbard in just such a way.”

“Mine would hover near my crucifix.”

“I think it may be a sling of some sort. A miniature pot-de-fer.”

“Can they be made so small? But it would sling such a mean bullet that it cannot be much of a weapon.”

“So said Goliath. Offer them my Burgundian quillon, if you think they may trade for it.” He had unfastened his belt and held it up to Dietrich, scabbard and all. Dietrich hefted it. “You want this sling of theirs so much? Well, that leaves only the question of how I may tell them so.”

“Surely demons know Latin!”

Dietrich did not argue terms. “They lack the lips and tongues for it. But I will do what I can. Max, who is the second horse for?”

Before the soldier could answer, Dietrich heard the approaching voice of Herr Manfred and a moment later, the lord passed through the gate in the outer wall with Hilde Müller on his arm. He was smiling down at her, covering hers hand with his where it gripped his left elbow. Dietrich waited while a manservant placed a stool and lifted Hilde into the saddle.

“Dietrich, a word?” said Herr Manfred. He took the mare by the rein and stroked its muzzle, speaking a few words of endearment to the beast. When the servant had gone past earshot, he said in a low voice, “I understand that we have demons in our woods.”

Dietrich gave Max a sharp glance, but the soldier only shrugged. “They’re not demons,” Dietrich told the Herr, “but distressed pilgrims of a strange and foreign mien.”

“Very strange and foreign, if my sergeant can be believed. Dietrich, I do not want demons in my woods.” He held up a hand. “No, nor ‘pilgrims of a strange and foreign mien.’ Exorcise them — or send them on their way — whichever seems appropriate.”

“My lord, you and I are of one accord on that.”

Manfred stopped petting the beast. “I would be grieved to know otherwise. Come tonight, after your return.”

He released the horse, and Dietrich jerked the jennet’s head toward the road. “Move, horse,” he said. “You’ll find more to nibble yonder.”

The horses plodded their way past the fields, where the harvesters still labored. The salland having been gleaned, the villagers now worked their own manses. The serfs had retired to the curial barn to thresh the lord’s grain. The peasants labored in common, moving from strip to strip according to some intricate schedule that the maier, the schultheiss, and the wardens had brokered long before.

A fistfight had broken out in Zum Holzbrücke, a manse belonging to Gertrude Metzger. Dietrich stood in his stirrups to watch, and saw that the wardens already had matters in hand. “What is it?” Hilde asked as she came abreast of him on the road.

“Someone was stuffing grain in his blouse to steal it and Trude’s nephew raised the hue and cry against him on her behalf.”

Hilde sniffed. “Trude should remarry and let a man work her land.”

Dietrich, who saw no connection between one’s widowhood and another’s theft, remained silent. They resumed their progress toward the wood. Shortly, he said, “A word of caution?”

“Regarding?”

“The Herr. He is a man of appetites. It would be well not to feed them. His wife has been dead now these two years.”

The miller’s wife said nothing for a space. Then she tossed her head and said, “What would you know of appetites?”

“Am I not a man?”

Hilde looked at him sidewise. “A fair question. If you’d pay the fine ‘under the linden,’ you could prove it to me. But the fine is double if the woman’s married.”

The heat rose in Dietrich’s neck and he watched her for a while as their horses plodded steadily onward. The Frau Müller rode with the inelegance of the peasant, flat against the saddle, bouncing against it with each step. Dietrich looked away before his thoughts could travel much further. He had tasted from that table and had found its pleasures over-rated. By God’s grace, women held little appeal for him.

It was not until they had entered the forest that Hilde spoke again. “I went to pray him food and drink for those awful things in the woods. That was all. He gave me the sacks you see here, tied behind the saddle. If he thought a price for the favor, he did not name it.”

“Ah. I had thought…”

“I know what you thought. Try not to think about it so much.” And with that remark, she kicked heels to her horse and trotted ahead of him down the path, her legs splaying artlessly at every jounce.

Reaching the charcoal kiln, Dietrich reined his mount in and spoke a short prayer for the souls of Anton and Josef. Shortly, the horse whickered and shied and Dietrich looked up to see two of the strange creatures watching from the edge of the clearing. He froze for a moment at the sight.

Would he ever grow accustomed to their appearance? Images, however grotesque, were one thing when carved of wood or stone; quite another thing when formed of flesh.

Hilde did not turn. “It’s them,” she said, “isn’t it? I could tell by the way you started.” Dietrich nodded dumbly, and Hilde heaved a breath. “I gag at their smell,” she said. “My skin crawls at their touch.”

One of the sentries swung its arm in a passable imitation of a human gesture and leapt into the woods, where it paused for Dietrich and Hilde to follow.

Dietrich’s horse balked, so he kicked until the beast followed, with notable reluctance. The sentry moved in long, gliding lopes, pausing now and then to repeat the beckoning arm gesture. It wore a harness on its head, Dietrich saw, although the bit stood free before its mouth. From time to time it chittered or seemed to listen.

At the edge of the clearing where the creatures had erected their strange barn, the mare tried to bolt. Dietrich called upon half-forgotten skills and fought the beast, turning it away from the sight, shielding its eyes with his broad-brimmed traveling hat. “Stay back!” he told Hilde, who had lagged behind. “The horses fear these beings.”

Hilde jerked hard on the reins. “Then they show better sense.” She and Dietrich dismounted out of sight of the strangers. After picketing the horses, they carried the food sacks to the camp, where several of the creatures awaited them. One snatched the sacks and, using an instrument of some sort, cut small pieces from the foods inside. These, it placed into small glass phials. Dietrich watched the creature sniff at the mouth of one phial and hold it up to the light, and it suddenly occurred to him that it was an alchemist. Perhaps these folk had never seen goose or turnips or apples and so were wary of eating them.

The sentry touched Dietrich on the arm — it was like being brushed with dry. He tried to fix the creature’s uniqueness in his memory, but there was nothing that his mind could seize on. Its height — taller than many. Its coloring — a darker gray. The yellow streak that showed through the gap of its shirt — a scar? But whatever idiosyncrasies there may have been were drowned in a wild impression of yellow faceted eyes and horny lips and too-long limbs.

He followed the sentry to the barn. The wall had a subtle and slippery feel, unlike any material he had ever encountered, likely a mixed body combining the elements of earth and water. Inside, he discovered that the barn was in fact an insula like the Romans used to build, for the interior was divided into apartments, meaner in size than even a gärtner’s hut. These strange folk must be remarkably poor to boast such cramped quarters.

The sentry led him to an apartment where three others awaited, then departed, leaving Dietrich curiously bereft. He studied his hosts.

The first sat directly before him, behind a table holding a number of curious objects of varied shapes and colors. A thin rectangular frame held a painting of a flowered meadow against distant trees. It was not a bas-relief, and yet it had depth! The artist had evidently solved the problem of rendering distance on a flat surface. Ach, what might Simone Martini, dead now but a handful of years, have given to study the craft! Dietrich peered closer.

There was something wrong about the shapes, something off about the colors. These were not quite flowers and not quite trees and had too much blue in their green. The blooms bore six petals of intense gold, arranged in three opposed pairs. The grass was the pale yellow of straw. A scene of the homeland from which these beings had come? It must be far, he thought, to possess such strange blossoms.

The iconography in the arrangement, the symbolism that informed a picture and called upon the painter’s true skills, eluded Dietrich. Meaning lay in the placement of particular saints or beasts, or in the relative sizes of the figures, or in their gestures or accouterments; but no living creatures occupied the scene, which was perhaps the strangest feature of all. It was as if the painting had been intended only as a simple reproduction of a vista! Yet, why essay such bald realism when the eye could behold as much unaided?

The second creature sat at a smaller table to the right side of the apartment. This wore a harness on its head and sat half-turned to face the wall. Dietrich took the harness as a mark of servitude. Like any such intent upon his duties, it took no notice of Dietrich’s entrance, but its fingers danced over another painting — an array of colored squares bearings various sigils. Then the servant touched one and -the image changed!

Dietrich gasped and stumbled backward, and the third creature, the one who leaned against the left-hand wall with its long arms entwined upon themselves like vines, spread its mouth wide and flapped its upper and lower lips together, making a sound like a babe learning to talk. “Wabwa-bwa-bwa.”

Was it a greeting? This one was tall, perhaps taller than Dietrich himself, and adorned with more colorful garb than the others: a buttonless vest such as the Moors favored, loose trousers of three-quarter’s length, a belt with a variety of tokens dependent upon it, a sash of bright yellow. Such finery marked a man of rank. Dietrich, having recovered his aplomb, bowed from the shoulders. “Wabwabwabwa,” he said, repeating the greeting as closely as he could.

In response, the creature dealt Dietrich a sharp blow.

Dietrich rubbed the stinging cheek. “You must not strike a priest of Jesus Christ,” he warned. “I will call you Herr Gschert.” The easy resort to blows had confirmed his surmise that this was one gently born.

The first creature, dressed as plainly as the servant but withal possessing an air of command, smacked the table with its forearm. A chittering arose and both it and Gschert waved their arms. Dietrich could see now that the sounds were made by the horny sides of the creatures’ mouths clicking rapidly together like the twin blades of a scissors-pair. He thought it must be speech but, despite his most intent concentration, it seemed only the noise of insects.

Whatever discussion obtained between the two reached a crescendo. The seated one raised both bare forearms and rasped one against the other. There were callused ridges along them and the gesture made a sound like ripping cloth. Herr Gschert made a move as if to strike, and the seated one stood as if prepared to return the blow. From the other side of the apartment, the servant looked on, as servants are wont to do when their betters quarrel.

But the Herr checked its swing and made another gesture entirely, a tossing motion that Dietrich had no difficulty interpreting as a dismissal, conceding whatever point had been in contention. The other creature tilted its head back and spread its arms and Herr Gschert clicked its side-jaws once, sharply, whereupon the other resumed its seat.

Dietrich could not conjugate precisely what had just happened. There had been an argument, he thought. The first creature had challenged its lord — and had in some fashion triumphed. What then was the status of the seated one? To raise a challenge implied that the party had honor, which a commoner could not possess. So. A priest, perhaps? A powerful vassal? Or the man of another lord whom Gschert wished not to offend? Dietrich decided to call this one The Kratzer, because of the gesture it had made with its arms.

Gschert leaned back against the wall and the Kratzer resumed his seat. Then, facing Dietrich, it began clicking his horned side-lips. In the midst of the insect buzz, a voice said, “Greet God.”

Dietrich started and looked to see whether somone else had entered the room.

The voice said again, “Greet God.” It issued undisputedly from within a small box on the table! Through the loose weave of a cloth stretched tightly across its face, Dietrich could discern a drum head. Did the creatures have a Heinzelmännchen trapped within? He tried to look through the curtain — he had never actually seen a brownie — but the voice said, “Sit thee.”

The command was so unexpected that Dietrich could think of no other response but to comply. There was something like a chair nearby, and he fit himself — badly — into it. The seat was uncomfortable, shaped to fit a different ass than his.

Now, a third time, the voice spoke. “Greet God.” This time, Dietrich merely answered. “Greet God. How goes it by you, friend Heinzelmännchen?”

“It goes well. What means this word Heinzelmännchen?” The words were toneless and fell like the beat of a pendulum. Did the sprite make fun? The little people were wont to pranks, and while some, like the brownies, were reputedly playful, others, like the Gnurr, could be petty and malicious.

“A Heinzelmännchen is one like yourself,” Dietrich said, wondering where this dialogue was going.

“Know you then others like myself?”

“You are the first I have met,” Dietrich admitted.

“Then, how know you that I be a Heinzelmännchen?”

Oh, clever! Dietrich could see that a battle of wits was about. Had the creatures captured a brownie and required now Dietrich’s offices to speak with it? “Who else,” he reasoned, “could fit inside a very small box but a very small man?”

This time there was a pause in the reply, and Herr Gschert made wa-wa sounds again, to which the Kratzer, who had been staring at Dietrich throughout, made the dismissive toss-gesture. It clicked its lips together — and the sprite said, “There is no small man. The box himself speaks.”

Dietrich laughed. “How can that be,” he asked, “when you have no tongue?”

“What means ‘tongue’?”

Amused, Dietrich stuck his tongue out.

The Kratzer reached its long arm out and touched the picture frame, and the picture changed to a portrait of Dietrich himself, fully-rendered in depth in the act of sticking his tongue out. In some manner, the tongue in the portrait glowed. Dietrich wondered if he had been wrong about the demonic nature of these beings. “Is this tongue?” the Heinzelmännchen asked.

“Yes, that is doch the tongue.”

“Many thanks.”

“It was when it thanked me,” Dietrich told Manfred later that evening, “that I began to suspect that it was a machine.”

“A machine…” Manfred thought about that. “You mean like Müller’s camshaft?” The two of them stood by a credence table near the fireplace in the great hall. The remnants of the dinner had been cleared, the children sent to bed with their nurse, the juggler thanked and dismissed with his pfennig, the other guests escorted to the door by Gunther. The hall was now sealed and even the servants sent away, leaving only Max to guard the door. Manfred filled two maigeleins with wine by his own hand. He proffered both, and Dietrich chose the one on the left. “Thank you, mine Herr.”

Manfred grinned briefly. “Should I suspect now that you, too, are all gears and cams?”

“Please, I was conscious of the irony.” They walked together from the credence table to stand near the fire. The ruddy embers hissed, and licked occasionally into flame.

Dietrich rubbed his hand across the roughly textured glass of his wine-bowl while he considered. “There was no cadence to the voice,” he decided. “Or, rather, its cadence was mechanical, without rhetorical flourishes. It lacked scorn, amusement, emphasis, … hesitation. It said ‘many thanks’ with all the feeling as a shuttlecock flying across a loom.”

“I see,” said Manfred, and Dietrich raised a finger post.

“And that was another convincing point. You and I understand that by ‘see’ you signified something other than a direct impression on the sense of sight. As Buridan said, there is more to the meaning of an utterance than the precise words uttered. But the Heinzelmännchen did not understand figures. Once it learned that the ‘tongue’ is a part of the body, it became confused when I referred to ‘the German tongue.’ It did not comprehend metonymy.”

“That’s Greek to me,” Manfred said.

“What I mean, my lord, is that I think… I think they may not know poetry.”

“No poetry…” Manfred frowned, swirled his wine cup, and threw down a swallow. “Imagine that,” he said. For a moment Dietrich thought the Herr had spoken sarcastically, but the man surprised him when he continued almost to himself, “No King Rother? No Eneit?” He lifted his cup and declaimed:

By God, I cannot hear those lines sung without a shiver.” He turned to Dietrich. “You will swear that this Heinzelmännchen is only a device and not a real brownie?”

“Mine Herr, Bacon described such a ‘talking head,’ though he knew not how one might be fashioned. Since thirteen years the Milanese built a mechanical clock in their public square that rings the hours with no man’s hand intervening. If a mechanical device can speak the time, why cannot a more subtle device speak of other matters?”

“That logic of yours will get you into trouble one of these days,” Manfred cautioned him. “But you say it already knew some phrases and words. How was that come by?”

“They placed devices about the village to listen to our speech. They showed me one. It was no bigger than my thumb and looked like an insect, for which reason I call them ‘bugs.’ From what he overheard, the Heinzelmännchen deduced somehow a meaning — that ‘How goes it?’ signified a greeting, or that ‘swine’ signified that particular animal, and so forth. But he was limited by what the mechanical bugs saw and heard, much of which he did not properly understand. So, while he knew that swine were sometimes called ‘sucklings’ or ‘yearlings,’ he did not grasp the distinction, let alone that between the first, second and third pen or between breeding and leader sows — by which I deduce that these folk are not swineherds.”

Manfred grunted. “You still call it a Heinzelmännchen, then.”

Dietrich shrugged. “The name is as good as any. But I coined a term in Greek to signify both the brownie and the bugs.”

“Yes, you would have…”

“I call them automata, because they are self-acting.”

“Like the mill-wheel, then.”

“Very like, save that I know not what fluid impresses an impetus on them.”

Manfred’s eyes searched the hall. “Might a ‘bug’ listen even now?”

Dietrich shrugged. “They placed them on Laurence-eve, just before your return. They are subtle, but I doubt they could have slipped into the Hof or the Burg. The sentries may not be the most alert, but they might have marked a skulking, five-shoe tall grasshopper.”

Manfred guffawed and slapped Dietrich on the shoulder. “A five-shoe grasshopper! Ha! Yes, they would have noticed that!”

In the parsonage, Dietrich examined his rooms carefully and finally found a bug no larger than his least finger-digit nestled in the arms of Lorenz’s cross. A clever perch. The automaton could observe the entire room and, dark-colored as it was, remain unseen.

Dietrich left it in place. If the strangers’ intent was to learn the German tongue, then the sooner that was accomplished, the sooner Dietrich could explain the need for them to depart.

“I will fetch a fresh hour-candle,” he announced to the listening instrument. Then, having obtained one from the casket, concluded, “I have fetched an hour-candle.” He held the candle so that it faced the bug. “This is called an ‘hour-candle.’ It is composed of…” He pinched a piece off the edge. “…of bee’s-wax. Each numbered line marks one twelfth-part of the day, from sunrise to sunset. I gauge the time by how far down the candle has burned.”

He spoke self-consciously at first, then more in the manner of an arts master giving a cursory. Yet, what listened was not a class of scholars, but one of Bacon’s talking heads and he wondered to what extent he was understood by the device, or even whether in this instance understanding had any meaning.