Eifelheim

“If by that you mean that I don’t shout and weep—”

“No. You talk — and while the words are always right, they are not always the right words. There is no joy in you, only a long-forgotten sorrow.”

Dietrich, much discomfited, said, “There is the tithe barn. Fetch the straw for the bedding.”

Joachim hesitated. “I had thought you went into the woods to lie with Hildegarde. I thought the leper colony a ruse. To believe that was the sin of rash judgement — and I pray your pardon.”

“It was a reasonable hypothesis.”

“What has reason to do with it? A man does not reason his way into a slattern’s bed.” He scowled and his thick brows knit together. “The woman is a whore, a temptress. If you did not go into the woods to be with her, it is certain that she went into the woods to be with you.”

“Judge her not too rashly, either.”

“I’m no philosopher, to mince words. If we are to grapple with a foe, let us at least name him. Men like you are a challenge to women like her.”

“Men like me…?”

“Celibates. Oh, how tasty are the grapes that dangle out of reach! How much more desired! Dietrich, you haven’t granted me pardon.”

“Oh, surely. I take the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I will pardon you as you pardon her.”

Surprise contorted the monk’s features. “For what must I pardon Hilde?”

“For having such ‘a woodpile stacked by the hut’ that you dream of her at night.”

Joachim blanched and his jaw muscles knit. Then he looked at the snow. “I do think on them, what they felt — might feel like in my hands. I am a miserable si

“So are we all. Which is why we merit love, and not condemnation. Which of us is worthy to throw the first stone? But let us at least not blame another for our own weakness.”

In the kitchen, Dietrich discovered Theresia huddled in a tight corner between the hearth and the outer wall. “Father!” she cried. “Send them away!”

“What ails you?” He reached to her, but she would not emerge from her corner.

“No, no, no!” she said. “Evil, wicked things! Father, they’ve come for us, they mean to take us down down down to hell. How could you let them come? Oh, the flames! Mother! Father, make them go away!” Her eyes did not apprehend Dietrich, but looked on another vision.

This affliction he had not seen in many years.

“Theresia, these Krenken are the distressed pilgrims from the woods.”

She clutched at the sleeve of his gown. “Can you not see their hideousness? Have they enchanted your eyes?”

“They are poor beings of flesh and blood, as we are.”

The monk had come to the door of the kitchen outbuilding, a bundle of staw for the bedding balanced on his shoulder. He dropped it and rushed to the alcove where he went to his knee before Theresia.

“The Krenken terrify her,” Dietrich told him.

Joachim held his hands out. “Come, let us go down to your own cottage. There are none there to frighten you.”

“She ought not to be frightened of them,” Dietrich said.

But Joachim turned on him. “In the name of Christ, Dietrich! First, give comfort; then juggle your dialectic! Help me lift her out of there.”

“You are a handsome boy, brother Joachim,” Theresia said. “He was handsome, too. He came with the demons and the fire but he wept and he carried me away and saved me from them.” She had taken two more steps, supported by Joachim and Dietrich on either side, when she shrieked. Hans and the Kratzer had come to the kitchen door.

“I would observe this woman,” the Kratzer said through the talking head. “Why do some of your folk respond so?”

“She is not one of your beetles or leaves, to be studied and divided by genus and species,” Dietrich said. “Fright has awakened old memories in her.”

Joachim took Theresia under his arm, placing himself between the herb woman and the Krenken, and hurried her through the door. “Make them go away!” Theresia begged Joachim.

Hans clicked his horny lips and said, “You shall have your wish.”

He did not ask Dietrich to translate the remark for the girl, and the priest could not help but wonder if it had been an involuntary exclamation, not meant for overhearing.

That evening, Dietrich tramped into the Lesser Wood and cut down pine branches, which he wove into an Advent wreath for the coming Sunday. When afterward he looked into the kitchen, he saw Joachim’s quilted, goose-down blanket laid over the shivering body of Joha

XII. January, 1348

Before Matins, the Epiphany of the Lord

Winter fell like a shroud. The first snow had barely slumped under the pale sun when a second fell upon it, and path and pasture vanished alike into anonymity. The mill stream and its pond froze clear to the bottom, and fish could be spied mid-wriggle in the wintry glass. Peasants in their cottages, employed in mending and repair, threw another log on the fire and rubbed their hands. The wider world had been emptied out and a pall of gray woodsmoke hung over the silence.

The Krenken huddled miserably before their hosts’ firesides, seldom venturing out. The snow had halted all thought of repair to their ship. Instead, they talked about how they would someday repair it.

But after a time, even the talk ceased.

The complines of St. Saturnius brought a wind buffeting the parsonage’s shuttered windows. A low sussurus moaned through chinks in the planking. Hans had gone to the outbuilding to prepare special krenkish foods for himself and the Kratzer. Joachim hunched over the refrectory table where, under the Kratzer’s critical eye, he whittled Balthazar from a bough of black oak, to add to his crèche figurines.

The door flew open, and the alchemist burst into the room and hopped immediately to the fireside, where he opened Gregor’s fur coat and luxuriated in the flames. “In Germany,” Dietrich said as he went to close the door, “the custom stands that we knock on the doorpost and await permission to enter.” But the alchemist, whom they had named after Arnold of Villanova, made no answer. He clacked some a

Dietrich took up the stew pot that he had earlier hung to simmer over the fire and served Joachim. The Krenken were a rude and ill-ma

Hans returned from the outbuilding with two plates in his hands. At sight of the alchemist, he hesitated, then handed one to the alchemist and the other to the Kratzer. He sat himself across the table from Joachim.

“That was kindly done,” Joachim said curling another shaving from Balthazar’s back.

Hans tossed his arm. “Were but one morsel left, it would be Arnold’s to swallow.”

Dietrich had noticed that even Gschert deferred to the alchemist, though Arnold was clearly an underling. “Why?” He spooned some soup into a wooden bowl and gave it to Hans, along with a stick of little-bread.

Instead of answering, Hans picked up the Christ-child that Joachim had previously carved. “Your brother tells me that this portrays your lord-from-the-sky; but the philosophy of the likelihood of events concludes that folk from different worlds must have different forms.”

“The philosophy of the likelihood of events,” Dietrich said. “That intrigues.”

“Though less so,” Joachim said dryly, “than Godhead made flesh. The Son of God, Hans, assumed the appearance of men at his Incarnation.”

Hans listened silently to his head harness. “The Heinzelmä