Eifelheim

Dietrich understood. “You are playing at stones, then.”

Lady Shepherd closed her side lips with measured delicacy. “One occupies one’s time as best as able. Game’s intricacies help me forget. ‘Because we die, we laugh and leap.’”

“Na,” said Dietrich, “Hans is out of the game now. He is Manfred’s vassal now.”

The Krenkerin laughed. “Also, four-sided version.”

XVI. March, 1349

Lent

With March had come the New Year. Serfs and villagers trimmed grapevines and cut posts for fences damaged by the winter’s snow. Since the truce imposed by Herr Manfred, humors had cooled, and many Krenken returned to their former guest-houses in the village. Hans, Gottfried, and a few others encamped by the shipwreck. The weather was warming, and Zimmerman and his nephews had built a shed for them heated by a stove of flagstones. This enabled them to work more hours on the repairs and, not incidently, minimize encounters with their recent foes. Gerlach Jaeger, who often ranged far hunting wolves, reported that, at eventide, he would sometimes spy them attempting their odd leaping dance “in concert.”

“They ain’t real good at it,” the hunter replied. “They forget, and then each of ’em just does what he wants.”

Dietrich often visited their camp, and he and Hans would walk the now well-marked forest paths while discussing natural philosophy. The trees had begun to green again, and a few impatient flowers spread their arms to pray for bees. Hans wore a sheepskin vest over leatherhose, his particular krenkish clothes having long since worn out.

Dietrich explained that, although the French began the Year of the Lord already at Christmastide, the Germans took the Incarnation as the proper time. The civil year began, naturally, in January. Hans could not understand such inconstancy. “On Krenkheim,” he said, “is not only the year standard, but so too the hour of the day and even to one part in two hundreds of thousands of the day.”

“The Kratzer divided your hour into a gross of minutes, and each minute into a gross of eyeblinks. What task can ever be done so quickly as to need an ‘eye-blink’ to mark it?”

“’Eye-blink’ is your term. It ‘signifies’ nothing to us.”

Could a man see humour in golden faceted globes; laughter in horny lips? Above them, he heard a colored woodpecker rap against a branch. Hans clacked back at it, as if answering, then laughed.

“We find such intervals useful,” he continued, “for measuring the properties of the ‘elektronik sea,’ whose… tides… rise and fall countless times during an eye-blink.”

“Ach so,” Dietrich said, “the waves that ripple in no medium. What is by you this ‘eyeblink’?”

“I must consult the Heinzelmä

“An eyeblink,” Hans a

Dietrich stared at the Krenk for a moment before the absurdity overwhelmed him, and he burst into laughter.

As they returned to the camp, Hans asked after the Kratzer. Dietrich told him of his many quodlibets with the philosopher over points of natural philosophy, but Hans interrupted. “Why has he not come to our camp?”

Dietrich studied his companion. “Perhaps he will. He complains of weakness.”

Hans suddenly stilled and Dietrich, thinking he had seen something in the forest, stopped also and listened. “What is it?”

“I fear we hold the Lenten fast too seriously.”

Dietrich said, “Lent is a demanding season. We await the Lord’s resurrection. But the Kratzer is not baptized; so why does he also fast?”

“From fellowship. We find comfort in that.” More, Hans would not say, but passed the remainder of the walk in silence.

At the camp, Ilse Krenkerin approached Dietrich. “Is it true, pastor, that those who swear fealty to your lord-from-the-skies will live again?”

“Doch,” Dietrich assured her. “Their spirits live forever in the communion of saints, to be reuinited with their bodies on the Last Day.”

“And your lord-from-the-sky is a being of energia, and so can find the energia of my Gerd and replace it in his body?”

“Ach. Gerd. Were you then his wife?”

“Not yet, though we spoke of finding a ‹no equivalent› on our return. He was of the crew and I was but a pilgrim taking passage, but he seemed so… so commanding… in his ship’s livery, and goodly in form. It was for my sake — that I need not drink the alchemist’s broth — that he counterspoke the Herr Gschert and joined the heretics. If your sky-lord will reunite us in a new life, I would swear my fealty also to him.”

Dietrich said nothing of Gerd’s unbaptized state. He was unsure of the correct reasoning. The law of love held that no man could be condemned for lacking beliefs he had never had opportunity to learn; but it was true also that only through Jesus could a man enter heaven. Perhaps Gerd would be admitted to that limb of heaven reserved for the virtuous pagans, a place of perfect natural happiness. But if so, and Ilse accepted the Christ, they would not be reunited. It was not an easy question, but he promised to arrange instruction for her and for two others in the camp who also asked.

He was pleased at their interest, and curious also what “the alchemist’s broth” might be.

To raise a junker to knighthood was a costly matter, since honor required celebrations worthy of the occasion: festivities, banquets, gifts, a competition of mi

The Zimmermans constructed a stand of benches in the meadow from which folk could watch the contests, and the sounds of hammer and saw drowned the grumbling at the extra work. A serf named Adolfus was so wroth at the additional work that he ran off, either to Freiburg or to the new towns in the wild East. His property escheated to Manfred, who bestowed the manse in halves to Hans and Gottfried.

“The land is servile,” Dietrich warned the new tenants, “so you’ll owe hand-service for it to Manfred, but you yourselves are free tenants.” He suggested they engage Volkmar Bauer to assume the plowing and reaping in return for half-shares in the harvest. Volkmar complained naturally that he was hard-pressed to work his own manses and those he owed the Herr; but he was a forethoughtful man and his kin might some day need additional furlongs. So arrangements were made by which divers obligations of the strips were rented to others, and the terms were witnessed by the schultheiss and written into the weistümer. While the transaction did not win Volkmar’s love for the Krenken, it did still the vogt’s more overt hostilities.

On the day before the knighting, which was the Third Sunday in Lent, the junkers fasted from dawn to dusk. Then, breaking fast at sunset, they put on robes of the purest white English wool and spent a vigil-night on their knees in the chapel. Eugen’s wound was healing, as the Savoyard had promised, though the scar was prominent and his smile would always have a sinister curl to it. Imein, who had fought creditably but without a wound, regarded the scar with something approaching envy.