Eifelheim

“Why is he here?” Hildegarde asked. “All he does is sit in the street and beg and rant.”

Dietrich made no answer. There were reasons. Reasons that wore golden tiaras and iron crowns. He wished that Joachim had never come, for he could accomplish little else but draw attention. But the Lord had said, “I was a stranger, and you took me in,” and He had never mentioned any exceptions. Forget the great events of the world beyond the woods, he reminded himself. They concern you no longer. But whether the world beyond the woods would forget him was another, and less comforting, thought.

In the confessional, Hildegarde Müller confessed to one small and petty act after another. She had damped the flour on the bags of grain brought to her husband for milling, the second worst kept secret in Oberhochwald. She had envied the brooch worn by Bauer’s wife. She had neglected her aged father in Niederhochwald. She seemed determined to work her way through the entire Decalogue.

Yet, two years past, this same woman had sheltered a ragged pilgrim on his way to the Church of St. Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Brian O Flai

Sin lay not in the concrete act, but in the will. Behind the woman’s recitation lay the cardinal sin of which these mean transgressions were but the visible signs. One could return a brooch or visit a parent; but unless the i

“And I have taken pleasure with men who were not my lawful husband.”

That being the worst-kept secret in Oberhochwald. Hildegarde Müller stalked men with the same cool deliberation with which Herr Manfred stalked the stags and boars that adorned the walls of Hof Hochwald. Dietrich had a sudden and disconcerting vision of what might dangle from Hildegarde’s trophy wall.

Trophies? Ach! That was the i

For every weakness, a strength; and so for pride, humility. Her penance, he decided, would require the usual restitutions. Return the brooch, restore the flour, visit her father. Have no other man than her husband. Treat any distressed pilgrim, however mean his station, with the same charity as she had shown the Irish lordling. But she must also, as a lesson in humility, scrub the flagstone floor of the church nave.

And this must be done in secret, lest she take pride even in her penances.

Afterward, robing in the sacristy for the morning Mass, Dietrich paused with his cincture half tied. There was a sound, like that of a bumble-bee, at the edge of his hearing. Drawn toward the window, he saw in the distance, above the Herr’s forest, woodleafsingers and acorn-jays flying in mad gyres above the place where earlier had glowed the pale luminescence. The glow had either faded or was now insensible against the brightening sky. But the vista seemed odd in some indefinable ma

At the base of Church Hill, a knot of people milled as witlessly as the birds above. Gregor and Theresia stood by the smithy in agitated conversation with Lorenz. Their hair was wild and unkempt, sticking out from their heads, and their clothing clung to them like iron filings to a lodestone. Others were about as well, but the usual morning work had come to a standstill. The smithy’s fire was unlit and the sheep bleated in their pen, the sheep-boys nowhere in sight. The pall of smoke that usually marked the charcoal kiln deep in the forest was absent.

The humming grew distinctly louder as Dietrich approached the window. Touching the glass lightly with a fingernail, he felt — a vibration. Startled, he pulled away.

Dietrich passed a hand through his locks, only to feel his hair writhe like a nest of snakes. The cause of these curiosities was waxing in strength, as the sound and size of a galloping horse grew with its approach — which analogy would argue that the source of the impetus was drawing nearer. There can be no motion in a body, Buridan had argued, unless an actor impresses an impetus. Dietrich frowned, finding the thought disturbing. Something was approaching.

He turned from the window to resume vesting and paused with one hand on the red chasuble.

Amber!

Dietrich remembered. Amber — elektron, as the Greeks called it — when rubbed against fur impressed an impetus to the fur that caused it to move in much the same way as his hair. Buridan had demonstrated it at Paris while Dietrich had been in studies. The master had found such delight in instruction that he had foregone the doctorate — and had become from his fees that great anomaly: a scholar never in want. Dietrich saw him now in memory, rubbing the amber vigorously against the cat’s-skin, his mouth pulled back in an unconscious grin.

Dietrich studied his own image in the window. God was rubbing amber against the world. Somehow, the thought excited him, as if he were on the verge of uncovering a form previously occult. A dizzy feeling, like standing atop the belfry. Of course, God was not rubbing the world. But something was happening that was like rubbing the world with amber.

Dietrich stepped to the sacristy door and looked into the sanctuary, where the Minorite was finishing the altar preparations. Joachim had thrown his cowl back, and the tight black curls ringing his tonsure danced to the same unseen impetus. He moved with that lithe grace that betokened gentle birth. Joachim had never known the villein’s hut or the liberties of the freetowns. The greater wonder when such a man, heir to important fiefs, dedicated his life to poverty. Joachim turned slightly, and the light from the clerestory highlighted fine, almost womanly features, set incongruously beneath shaggy brows that grew together over the nose. Among those who measured the beauty of men, Joachim might be accounted beautiful.

Joachim and Dietrich locked gazes for a moment, before the monk turned to the credence table to fetch two candlesticks used for the missa lecta. As the Minorite’s hands approached the copper prickets, sparks arced forth to dance on his fingertips.

Joachim jerked and reared his arm. “God’s curse on this wealth!”

Dietrich stepped forward and seized the arm. “Be reasonable, Joachim. I have had these prickets since many years and never have they bitten anyone before. If God is displeased with them, why wait until now?”

“Because God has finally lost patience with a Church in love with Mammon.”

“Mammon?” Dietrich gestured around the wooden church. From beams and rafters wild faces looked down on them. In the lancet windows, narrow saints in colored glass scowled or smiled or raised a hand in blessing. “This is hardly Avignon.”