Eifelheim

“No. Ulf needed it far more.” Hans pawed with his left hand, seeking Dietrich. “Move, twitch. I can barely see you. No, I would rather discourse on great questions. Unlikely, that either you or I have the answers, but it distracts a little from the pain.”

Dawn was crawling up the Oberreid road. Dietrich rose. “Perhaps some willow bark tea, then. It eases head-pain among us, and may serve you also.”

“Or kill me. Or it may contain the missing protein. Willow bark tea… Was it among those things Arnold or the Kratzer tried? Wait, the Heinzelmä

“Still, if it dulls the pain… Gregor?” He called to the mason, who sat by his eldest son on the other side of the smithy. “Have we any willow bark prepared?”

Gregor shook his head. “Theresia was stripping bark two days ago. Shall I fetch it?”

Dietrich dusted his robes. “I will.” To Hans, he added, “Rest well. I’ll be back with the potion.”

“When I am dead,” the Krenkl replied, “and Gottfried and Beatke drink of me in my memory, each will give his share to the other out of charity, and thus will the quantity double in size from being traded back and forth. Bwah-wa-wah!”

The jest escaped Dietrich, and he supposed his friend had developed a flaw in his weave. He crossed the road, waving to Seybke at work in his father’s stoneyard. Carving tombstones. Dietrich had told the masons not to worry at the task, but Gregor had said, “What is the point of living if folk forget you when you’re dead?”

Dietrich knocked on Theresia’s doorjamb and received no answer. “Are you awake?” he called. “Have you any willow bark prepared?”

He knocked again and wondered if Theresia had gone to the Lesser Wood. But he pulled the string on the latch and opened the door.

Theresia stood barefoot in the middle of the dirt floor, wearing only her night gown but crumpling and wringing a coverslut in her hands. When she saw Dietrich, she cried out. “What do you want! No!”

“I came to ask after willow bark. Excuse my intrusion.” He backed away.”

“What have you done to them?”

Dietrich stopped. Did she mean those who had left? Those who had died in the hospital?

“Don’t hurt me!” Her face had turned red with anger; her jaw clenched tight.

“I would never hurt you, schatzl. You know that.”

“You were with them! I saw you!”

Dietrich had just begun to parse her sentence, when she opened her mouth once more; only this time, rather than cries of fright, there issued forth a fountain of black vomit. He was close enough that some of it spattered him, and the rank of it quickly filled the room. Dietrich gagged .

“No, God!” he cried. “I forbid this!”

But God was not listening and Dietrich wondered madly if He, too, had fallen to the pest and His vast incorporeal essence, “infinitely extended without extent or dimension,” was rotting even now in the endless void of the Empyrean sphere, beyond the crystalline heavens.

The fear and rage had fled from Theresia’s countenance and she looked down at herself with astonishment. “Daddy? What’s wrong, daddy?”

Dietrich opened his arms to her and she staggered into them. “Here,” he said. “You must lie down.” He reached into his scrip and pulled out his cloth pocket of flowers and held it to his nose. But their essence had faded, or else the stink was too powerful.

He guided her to the bed, and thought as she leaned upon him that she had become already as light as a spirit. As it is the nature of earth to seek the center of the earth, so is it the nature of air to seek the heavens.

Gregor had come to the door of the cottage. “I heard you cry — . Ach, Herr God in Heaven!”

Theresia turned to go to him. “Come, dear husband.” But Dietrich held her firmly. “You must lie down.”

“Ja, ja, I am so tired. Tell me a story, daddy. Tell me about the giant and the dwarf.”

“Gregor, bring my lance. Wash it with old wine and hold it in the fire, as Ulf showed us. Then hurry.”

Gregor leaned against the jamb and ran a hand over his face. He looked up. “The lance. Ja, doch. So soon as possible.” He hesitated. “Will she…?”

“I don’t know.” Gregor left and Dietrich made Theresia lie down upon the straw. He arranged a blanket under her head as a pillow. “I must check for the pustules,” he told her.

“Am I sick?”

“We’ll see.”

“It’s the pest.”

Dietrich said nothing, but lifted the sodden gown.

There it sat in her groin, great and black and swollen, like a malignant toad. It was larger than the one he had lanced on Everard. It could not have grown overnight. When the onset was rapid, the afflicted died quickly and quietly, without pustules. No, this had been growing for several days, if he was to judge by those he had seen on others.

Gregor rushed in and squatted beside him, first passing him the lance still warm from the fire, then taking Theresia’s hand in his own. “Schatzi,” he said.

Theresia’s eyes had closed. Now they opened and she gazed seriously into Dietrich’s face. “Will I die?”

“Not yet. I need to lance your pustule. It will give great pain, and I have no more sponges.”

Theresia smiled, and blood dripped from the corners of her mouth, reminding Dietrich of the stories of the Freudenstadt Werewolf. Gregor had found a cloth somewhere and he dabbed at the blood, trying to clean her, but more blood welled up with every dab. “I am afraid for her to open her mouth,” he said tightly. “I think all her life will gush forth.”

Dietrich climbed atop the woman and sat athwart her legs. “Gregor, hold her down by the arms and shoulder.”

He reached toward the pustule in Theresia’s crotch. When the point had but touched the tough, hard integument, Theresia shrieked, “Sancta Maria Virgina, ora pro feminis!” And her legs spasmed wildly, nearly unseating Dietrich. Gregor grimly held tight to her arms.

Dietrich pressed in with the point, thrusting a little to break the skin, as he had grown sadly accustomed to doing. I am too late, he thought. The pustule is far advanced. It was the size of an apple, and of a dark, malignant blue.

“She showed no sign of it yesterday,” Gregor said. “I swear it.”

Dietrich believed him. She had concealed the signs, afraid of being bedded among the demons. What sort of fear was it, he wondered, that could smother even the fear of ghastly death? The Lord had commanded, be not afraid, but men broke all His other commandments, why not that one?

The skin broke and a thick, foul, yellow ichor oozed forth, coloring her thighs and soaking into the straw ticking of the mattress. Theresia screamed and called on the Virgin again and again.

Dietrich found another pustule, much smaller, high up on her i

Gregor nodded and pulled her gown up as far as he could. Theresia’s cries had subsided into sobs. She said, “The other man was not so nice.”

“What was that, schatzi? Pastor, what does she mean?”

Dietrich would not look at him. “She is delirious.”

“He had a beard, too; but it was bright red. But daddy made him go away.” The blood ran down her chin as she talked and Gregor mopped after it without hope.

Dietrich remembered the man. His name had been Ezzo, and his beard had been red from his own blood, after Dietrich had slit his throat and pulled him off the girl.

“You are safe now,” he told the girl, told the woman she had become. “Your husband is here.”

“It hurts.” Her eyes were clenched closed now.

There was one more pustule, under her right arm, as big as Dietrich’s thumb. This was more difficult to lance, for when he came off her legs, they bent and tucked themselves up, as small children were wont to do when sleeping. Theresia hugged her knees. “It hurts,” she said again.