Eifelheim

“All those who do the work do the work,” the Kratzer a

Dietrich thought he meant that philosophers were unskilled in shipbuilding, which was no astonishing insight. “Even so,” he insisted, “there may be apprentice tasks you could perform.”

At this, the Kratzer’s ante

“Such labor,” the Kratzer said finally, “is for those who perform such labors.”

The statement had the seeming of a proverb and, like many proverbs, suffered from a conciseness that reduced it to a tautology. He was reminded of those philosophers who, grown lately besotted with the Ancients, affected their prejudice against manual labor. Dietrich could not imagine himself shipwrecked and unwilling to assist his fellows in the necessary repairs. In such straits, even the gently born would put a hand to the task. “Labor,” he pointed out, “has its own dignity. Our Lord was a carpenter and called to Himself fishermen and tent-makers and other humble folk. Pope Benedict, may he rest in peace, was the son of a miller.”

“Did I hear the utterance correctly,” the Kratzer said. “A carpenter may become a lord. Bwawawa. Can a stone become a bird — question. Or are all your lords base-born — question.”

“I grant you,” Dietrich admitted, “that a man born into his besitting will seldom rise above it, yet we do not despise the working man.”

“Then we are not so different, your folk and mine,” the Kratzer said. “For us, too, our besitting is written… I think you would say, it is written into ‘the atoms of our flesh.’ There is a sentence among us: ‘As we are, so we are.’ It would be thought-lacking to despise one for being what he was born to be.”

“The ‘atoms of flesh’…?” Dietrich had started to ask when the Heinzelmä

The Kratzer directed a series of rapid clacks at Hans, at the conclusion of which, the latter exposed his neck and addressed once more his type-writing. When the philosopher spoke again he returned to, “this curious event of the colored trees. Know you the reason for it — question.”

Dietrich, uncertain what the quarrel signified and unwilling to provoke the Kratzer’s anger, answered that the Herr God had arranged the color-change to warn of approaching winter, while the evergreens maintained the promise of spring to come, and thus imbued into the moods of the year sorrow and hope alike. This explanation puzzled the Kratzer, who asked whether Manfred’s overlord were a master forester, at which non sequitur Dietrich despaired of explanation.

The Church celebrated the begi

At the Offertory, Klaus presented a bunch of ripe grapes picked from his own vines and, during the Consecration, Dietrich squeezed one of the grapes to mingle its juice with the wine in the chalice. Usually, the congregation would chatter among themselves, even lingering in the vestibule until summoned by the Preparation Bell. Today they watched in rapt concentration, engaged not by memory of the Christ’s sacrifice, but by hope that the ritual would bring good luck in the harvest — as if the Mass were mere sorcery, and not a memorial of the Great Sacrifice.

Elevating the chalice high above his head, Dietrich saw nested in the vices under the clerestory the glowing yellow eyes of a Krenk.

Frozen, he stood with arms extended, until the appreciative murmur of his flock called him to himself. A superstition had been gaining favor of late that the door from Purgatory to Heaven flew open while the bread and wine were elevated, and worshippers sometimes complained if the priest made too brief an Elevation. Surely, by such a lengthy elevation, their priest had won a great many souls free, to the greater sanctification of the wine harvest.

Dietrich replaced the cup on the altar and, genuflecting, mumbled the closing words because the sense of them had suddenly fled his mind. Joachim, who knelt beside him holding the hem of the chasuble in one hand and the bell in the other, glanced also toward the rafters, but if he saw the creature, he gave no sign. When Dietrich dared once more to raise his own eyes, the unexpected visitor had withdrawn into the shadows.

After Mass, Dietrich knelt before the altar with his hands clenched into a ball before him. Above, carved from a single great piece of red oak, darkened further by a hundred years of smoking beeswax, Christ hung impaled upon His cross. The wasted figure — naked but for a scrap of decency, body twisted in agony, mouth gaping open in that last pitiable accusation — Why have you abandoned me? — emerged from the very wood of the cross, so that victim and instrument grew one from the other. It had been a brutal and humiliating way to die. Far kinder, the faggot, noose, or headsman’s axe that in modern times eased the journey.

Dimly, Dietrich heard the rumble of carts, clatter of billhooks and pruning shears, braying of donkeys, indistinct voices, curses, snap of whips, groan of wheels, as the villagers and the serfs gathered and departed for the vineyards. Quiet descended by degrees until all that was left beyond the ancient groaning of the walls was a distant, irregular kling-klang from Lorenz’s smithy at the foot of the hill.

When he was certain that Joachim had not lingered, Dietrich rose to his feet. “Hans,” he said softly when he had do

A shadow moved under the roof-beams and a voice spoke in his ear. “I wear a harness that gives flight, and entered through the bell tower. The sentence was in my head to watch your ceremony.”

“The Mass? Why?”

“The sentence is that you hold the key for our salvation, but the Kratzer laughs, and Gschert will not listen. Both say we must find our own way back to the heavens.”

“It is a heresy many have fallen prey to,” admitted Dietrich, “that heaven can be reached without help.”

The Krenk servant was silent for a moment before answering. “I had thought your ritual would complete inside my head the picture of you.”

“And has it?”

Dietrich heard a sharp clack from the rafters above him and he craned his neck to spy where the Krenk had now perched himself. “No,” said the voice in his ear.

“The picture of Dietrich inside my own head,” Dietrich admitted, “is also incomplete.”

“This is the problem. You want to help us, but I see no gain for you.”

Shadows shifted in the flickering candlelight, not quite black because the flames that cast them guttered red and yellow. Two small lights gleamed in the vises. Were they the Krenk’s eyes catching the dancing fires, or only metal fittings securing a beam? “Must there give always a gain for me in what I do?” Dietrich asked of the darkness, uncomfortably aware that the gain he sought was his own continued solitude and freedom from fear.