Eifelheim

“They think you unfriendly,” said Lorenz, jostling him loose of memories. “You stand here by the tree when everyone else is over there.” He waved toward the sounds of fiddle and whistle and bagpipe, a congeries of noises with the seeming of familiar songs, yet attenuated a little by distance and the breeze, so that only snatches of tune remained sensible.

“I’m guarding the tree,” Dietrich said with utter gravity.

“Are you?” Lorenz turned his head up toward the bright decorations fluttering in the treetop. The breeze whipped the flags and garlands so that the tree, too, seemed to dance. “And who might steal such a thing?”

“Grim, maybe; or Ecke.”

Lorenz laughed. “What a fancy.” The smith sank to his haunches and leaned back against the wall of Ackerma

“I always loved those stories when I was young,” the smith confessed. “Dietrich of Berne and his knights. Fighting Grim and the other giants; outwitting the dwarves; rescuing the Ice Queen. When I see Dietrich in my mind, he always looks like you.”

“Like me!”

“Sometimes I imagine new adventures for Dietrich and his knights. I thought I would write them myself, had I my letters. There was one — I set it during the time the hero spent with King Etzl — that I thought especially fine.”

“You could always recite your tales for the children. You don’t need your letters for that. Did you know Etzl’s real name was Attila?”

“Was it? But, no, I would never dare recite my stories. They wouldn’t be true, only fancies I had made up.”

“Lorenz, all of the Dietrich tales are fancies. Laurin’s helm of invisibility, Wittich’s enchanted sword, the mermaid’s bracelet that Wildeber wore. Dragons and giants and dwarves. When have you ever seen such things?”

“Well, I’ve always supposed that in this base age we have forgotten how to make enchanted swords. And as for the dragons and giants — why, Dietrich and the other heroes killed them all.”

“Killed them all!” Dietrich laughed. “Yes, that would ‘save the appearances’.”

“You said Etzl was real. What of the Goth kings — Theodoric and Ermanric?”

“Yes. They all lived in the Frankish Age.”

“Since so long!”

“Yes. It was Etzl who killed Ermanric.”

“There. You see?”

“See what?”

“If they were real — Etzl and Herman and Theodor — then why not Laurin the dwarf or Grim the giant? Don’t laugh! I met a pack peddler from Vie

The priest scratched his head. “Albrecht the Great described such bones. He thought with Avice

“Perhaps the bones of a dragon, then,” Lorenz suggested slyly, leaning close and placing a conspiratorial hand on his arm.

Dietrich smiled. “Do you think so?”

“Your tankard is empty. I’ll fetch another.” Lorenz pushed to his feet, and hesitated halfturned away. “There is talk,” he said after a pause.

Dietrich nodded. “There generally is. What of?”

“That you go too often into the woods with the Frau Müller.”

Dietrich blinked and looked into his empty stein. He wondered why he should be surprised to learn of the gossip. “Bluntly put, my friend, but the Herr has established a lazaretto-”

“- in the Great Wood. Ja, doch. But with the Frau Müller we know also which way the rabbit runs and if she truly is caring for lepers, that would be a second pair of boots.”

Dietrich, too, wondered that so selfish and prideful a woman had persisted in her charity. “Rash judgment is a sin, Lorenz. Besides, Max the Schweitzer goes often with us.”

The smith shrugged. “Two men in the woods with his wife will hardly reassure the miller. I’ve only said what I’ve heard. I know…” He paused and turned the tankard over in his hand. It was as if his soul had retreated from the two windows in his face. The dregs of the beer dribbled out onto the dirt unseen. “I know the sort of man you are, so I believe you.”

“You could try believing with greater certitude.” Dietrich said sharply, so that Lorenz turned a startled face on him, then hurried off on his errand. The smith was a gentle man — surprisingly so, given his strength — but he was a woman for gossip.

Felix and Ilse came to give him a pair of hens for the blessing of the house. Dietrich would have refused them, yet winter would be coming and even priests must eat. The eggs would be appreciated and, later, the stew. In return, Dietrich reached into his scrip and pulled out the wooden doll and gave it to their little girl. He had polished it to remove the scorches, and had replaced the charred arms and legs with fresh sticks he had found. The hair, he had cut from his own head. But Maria dropped the doll into the dirt and cried, “That isn’t A

Sighing, he replaced the doll into his scrip. It wasn’t the doll, he thought. The doll was only a construction of sticks and rags. There was nothing precious about such things. He stood and picked up the wooden cage with the clucking chickens. “Come now, sister hens,” he said, “I know a rooster who is anxious to meet you.”

Something repaired, he thought as he returned to the parsonage, is never quite what it was before. Whatever other parts were replaced, the memories could never be.

Two years before his death, while praying fervently on Mount Alvernia, Saint Francis of Assisi received on his body an impression of the sacred wounds of Christ. Three-quarters of a century later, Pope Benedict XI, a sickly, scholarly, peace-loving man, uneasy outside the company of his Dominican order, established the feast as a token of good-will to the rival order. So, although Hildegarde of Bingen was the saint for that day, Dietrich read the Mass Mihi autem to honor Francis and as a brotherly gesture toward his house guest. This may have disappointed Theresia, for the Abbess Hildegarde, author of a well-known treatise on medicines, was a special favorite of hers; but if so, she made no protest.

The Mass had barely concluded when Joachim threw himself face down on the freshly-washed flagstones before the altar. Dietrich, putting the vessels away, thought the display unseemly. He slammed the storage cabinet and made a show of stepping around the prostrate monk as he crossed the sanctuary. “In Galatians today,” he said, “Paul told us that it matters not whether we bear visible marks, so long as we become a new man.”

Joachim’s prayers cut off abruptly. After a moment, the man rose to his knees, crossed himself, and turned around. “Is that what you think?”

“In Galatia, those Jews who had not accepted Christ criticized those who had, because the Galatian pagans who had also been saved did not follow the Law of Moses. So, the Jewish Christians urged the Galatian Christians to become circumcised, hoping to use that outward sign to mollify their accusers. But the Galatians had a horror of bodily mutilation; so much turmoil resulted. Paul wrote to remind everyone that outward signs no longer mattered.”