Eifelheim

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 cha

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 pi

“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?

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’ a

“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 ma

“I’ll put this against my second furlong,” the boy a

“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 Ackerma

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 pfe

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 mi

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.