Eifelheim

Metzger had been a surly man, given to drink and excess, though he’d been a fair plowman. Trude hadn’t his cu

“I have a pfe

Trude lifted her cap and swiped a hand across her red brow, leaving another streak of dirt across it. “And why should I share my wealth with some lackland?”

Dietrich wondered how his pfe

“So why has no one else hired him?”

Dietrich thought, because he is as ill-tempered as yourself, but held his tongue from prudence. Trude, perhaps suspecting the imminent withdrawal of the pfe

“That is the man. Klaus uses him in the mill when he has the work.”

“We’ll see if he is as good as your praises make him out. Melchior! Have you gotten the team straight yet? Can you do nothing right?” Trude dropped the reins and strode to the head of the team and yanked the leads from her son’s hands. Leaning into them, she shortly had the team aligned and shoved the reins back at Melchior. “That’s how it’s done! No, wait until I have the plow in hand! God in heaven, what did I ever do to deserve such gofs? Peter, you missed some clods. Pick up that mattock.” Peter hopped to his feet before his mother could yank his head about as she had the lead ox.

Dietrich picked his way to the road and returned to the village. He thought he might visit Nickel to warn him.

“You do not seem a happy man,” Gregor a

“I’ve been to Trude in the field,” Dietrich explained.

“Hah! Sometimes I think old Metzger threw himself under the horse to escape her.”

“I think he was drunk and fell.”

The mason gri

“That reminds me,” Gregor added. “Max has been looking for you. The Herr wants to speak to you, up in the Hof.”

“On what matter, did he say?”

“The leper colony.”

“Ah.”

Gregor worked the stone, striking his chisel with hard, precise strokes. Chips flew. Then Gregor squatted to study the level, ru

“The rot spreads by touch, so the ancients wrote. That is why they must live apart.”

“Ach, no wonder Klaus is in such a state.” Gregor straightened and wiped his hand with a rag tucked into his leather apron. “He fears Hilde’s touch. Or so I’ve heard.” The mason looked at him from under lowered brows. “So does everyone else. She’s had no riding this last month, the poor woman.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Half the village may explode from lust. Was it not Augustine who wrote that a lesser evil may be tolerated to prevent a greater?”

“Gregor, I shall make a scholar of you yet.”

The mason crossed himself. “May Heaven forbid such a thing.”

The afternoon sun had not yet reached the slit window, and Manfred’s scriptorium lay partly in shadows undispelled by the torches. Dietrich sat before the writing table while Manfred cut in two a Roman apple and proffered half.

“I could order you to return to the lazaeretto,” the lord said.

Dietrich took a bite from his apple and savored the tartness. He looked at the candle prickets, at the silver ink-stand, at the leering beasts on the arms of Manfred’s curule chair.

Manfred waited a moment longer then he laid the knife aside and leaned forward. “But I need your wits, not your obedience.” He laughed. “They have been in my woods long enough now that I ought to take rent of them.”

Dietrich tried to imagine Everard collecting rents from Herr Gschert. He told Manfred what the servant had said: that their cart was broken and they could not leave. The Herr rubbed his chin. “Perhaps that is just as well.”

“I had thought you wanted them gone,” Dietrich said carefully.

“So I had,” Manfred answered. “But we mustn’t be too hasty. There are things I must know about these strange folk. Have you heard the thunder?”

“All afternoon. An approaching storm.”

Manfred shook his head. “No. That crack is made by a pot de fer. The English had them at Calais, so I know the sound of it. Max agrees. I believe your ‘lepers’ have black-powder, or they know the secret of it.”

“But there is no secret,” Dietrich said. “Brother Berthold discovered it in Freiburg back in Bacon’s day. He had the ingredients from Bacon, though not the proportions, which he learned by trial and error.”

“It would be the errors that concern me,” Manfred said dryly.

“Berthold was called ‘the Black’ because he had been singed by his powder so often.” Ockham had presented Buridan with a copy of Bacon made by the monks at Merton directly from the master’s copy, and Dietrich in turn had read it avidly. “It is the niter that does the violence, as I recall, together with sulfur to make it burn and…” Dietrich stopped and looked at Manfred.

“…And charcoal,” Manfred finished blandly. “Charcoal of willow is best, I have heard. And we have lately lost our charcoal makers, not so?”

“You expect these Krenken to make black powder for you. Why?”

Manfred leaned back against the stones. He twined his fingers under his chin, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair. “Because the gorge is a natural route between the Danube and the Rhine, and Falcon Rock sits like a stopper in a pipe. Trade has dried to a trickle — and with it, my own dues.” He smiled. “I mean to bring down Falcon Rock.”

Dietrich agreed that von Falkenstein, despoiler of pilgrims and holy nuns, was in want of a reining-in. Yet he wondered if Manfred realized that enough black powder to bring down Falcon Rock was more than enough to obliterate Burg Hochwald. Dietrich contented himself with the thought that the art was a difficult one, requiring a sure touch. If the Krenken could handle the mixture safely, and Manfred learned it of them, how long before all Christendom knew? What worth, then, Burg or schildmauer?

In his mind, ranks of peasants bore Bacon’s “fire lances” across a battle field while da Vigevano’s armored war carts hurled balls of stone from immense pots de fer. Bacon had described small parchment tubes that his friend, William Rubruck, had brought from Cathay, and which exploded with great noise and flash. “If a device of large size were made,” the Franciscan had written in his Opus tertius, “no one could withstand the noise and blinding light, and if the parchment were replaced by metal, the violence of the explosion would be much greater.” Bacon had been a man of great and disturbing visions. Such devices planted on the battlefield could destroy the chivalry of an entire nation.

Entering his quarters, Dietrich saw that the hour-candle was out. He placed some tinder in a flash pan and ignited it from a flint. Perhaps someday an artisan might fashion a mechanical clock small enough to fit inside a room. Then, instead of forgetting to light the candle, he could forget to lift the counterweights. Using a taper, he transferred the flame to the hour candle. Light chased shadow from the center of the room, confined it to the corners. Dietrich bent to read the hour and was gratified to find that only a little time had been lost from the sun’s position. The candle must have blown out but a scant while ago.