Eifelheim

“Yes. I have heard you consort with demons.” Hans’ lips gaped and he made threatening gestures. “Perhaps I will fly to this Strassburg and frighten the bishop into surrender.”

“Pray, do not.”

“Rest easy. Soon, your ‘demons’ shall trouble you no more.” He hunched forward, as if poised to leap, and stretched forth his arm. “I see movement on the Bear Valley road.”

Dietrich shaded his eyes against the distance. “Dust,” he said at last. “Use your far-speaker and alarm Baron Grosswald. I fear he must hide his people once again.”

At first the travelers were shadows against the westering sun, and Dietrich, waiting in the road astride his rouncy, heard the weary clop of the hooves and the whining complaints of the axle well before he could discern their features. But as they closed, he saw that the man astride the je

The Jew noted Dietrich’s garb and said, with the briefest dip of his head, “Peace to my lord.”

Dietrich knew that Jews who were strict observers of their Law were forbidden to greet or to return the greeting of a Christian, and so by ‘my lord’ the man had meant in his heart his own rabbi and not Dietrich. It was a deft stratagem by which he could observe both the i

“I am Malachai ben Schlomo,” the old man said. “I seek the lands of Duke Albrecht.” His voice reeked of Spain.

“The Duke disposes a fief nearby called Niederhochwald,” he told them. “This is the road to Oberhochwald, held by the same Herr. I will take you to him, if it pleases.”

The old man brushed with his fingers, a gesture that meant to lead on, and Dietrich turned his horse toward the village. “Have you come from… Strassburg?” Dietrich asked.

“No. Regensburg.”

Dietrich turned to him in surprise. “If you seek Hapsburg lands, you have come the wrong way.”

“I took what roads I could,” the old man said to Dietrich.

Dietrich brought the Jew to Manfred’s hof, where he told his story. The blood libel had sparked riots in Bavaria, it seemed, and Malachai had been forced to flee, his home burned, his possessions plundered.

“That was infamous!” Dietrich exclaimed.

Malachai dipped his head. “I had suspected so; but my thanks for the confirmation.”

Dietrich ignored the sarcasm and Manfred, much affected by the man’s woes, bestowed sundry gifts on him and conducted him personally to the manor house in Niederhochwald, where Malachai would await a party of the Duke’s men to escort them safely across Bavaria to Vie

The one place in Oberhochwald where the Jews would not betake themselves was inside the church of St. Catherine, so many of the Krenken had hidden themselves there. Dietrich, entering to prepare for the Mass, spied the gleaming eyes of Krenken perched among the rafters. He repaired to the sacristy and Hans and Gottfried followed. “Where are the others?” he asked them.

“At the camp,” Hans told him. “Though it is warm now, they have grown soft these past months, and find the woods less congenial than the village. We, in turn, find their company less congenial, and so have come here. The Kratzer asks when they can emerge.”

“The Jews depart tonight for the Lower Woods. Your folk may return to their labors tomorrow.”

“That pleases,” said Hans. “’Work is the mother of forgetting.’”

“A difficult mother,” Gottfried said, “with so little food to sustain one.”

This puzzled Dietrich, the Lenten fast being long past. But Hans held a hand out to silence his companion. He hopped to the window, from which he viewed the village. “Tell me about these Jews and — their special foods.”

Gottfried had turned to the vestments and appeared to study them, but in that head-halfcocked way that showed he was also listening closely.

“I know little of Jewish foods,” Dietrich said, “save that some, like pork, they shun.”

“Much like us,” Gottfried said, but Hans again silenced him.

“Are there other foods, which they eat, but you do not?”

By the stillness of the Krenken, Dietrich knew that the question was important. Gottfried’s comment, with its implication of judaizing tendencies, troubled him. “I know of none,” he said carefully. “But they are a very different folk.”

“So different as Gottfried from me?” Gottfried turned from his inspection of the Mass vestments and flapped his soft lips.

Dietrich said, “I see no difference between you.”

“Yet his folk came once to our land and… But that is the foregone-time, and all has changed. You may have noticed that Shepherd speaks differently. In her heimat, what we call grandkrenkish is little used, so the Heinzelmä

“Rumors of the well-poisonings have outrun the pest, and men do mad things from fear.”

“Men do foolish things.” Hans ran his finger down the edging that held the glass light in the window. “Does killing their neighbor stem the ‘small-lives’ that make disease? Is my life longer if I have shortened another’s?”

Dietrich said, “Pope Clement has written that Christian piety must accept and sustain Jews; so these massacres are the work of sinful and disobedient men. He contends that Jewish and Christian learning make one whole, which he calls ‘Judaeo-Christian.’ Christendom issued from Israel as a child from a mother, so we must not anathematize them as we do heretics.”

“But you do not like them,” Hans said. “You have shown it so.”

Dietrich nodded. “Because they rejected the Christ. For so long as the Savior was to come, the Jews were chosen by God to be a light to the nations, and God placed many laws on them as a sign of their holiness. But once the Savior was come, their mission ended, and the light was given to all the nations, as Isaiah prophesied. The laws that set them apart were void; for if all peoples are called to God, there can be no distinctions among them. Many Jews did believe, but others clung to the old Law. They incited the Romans to kill our blessed Lord. They killed James, Stephen, Barnabas and many others. They sowed dissension in our communities, disrupted our services. Their general Bar Kochba massacred the Jewish Christians and drove many into exile. Later, they betrayed Christians to Roman persecutors. In Alexandria they lured Christians from their homes by crying that the church was on fire and then attacked them when they emerged; and, in far-off Arabia, where they ruled as kings, they massacred thousands of Christians at Najran. So you see the enmity is of long standing.”

“And those who did these deeds are still alive?”

“No, they are dust.”

Hans tossed his arm. “Can a man be guilty of a deed done by others? What I see is that there stands a limit to this charitas that you and Joachim preach, and enmity may be returned for enmity.” He struck the window frame repeatedly with his forearm. “But if vengeance is the law, why did I leave the Kratzer?” This outburst was greeted with silence by both Gottfried and Dietrich. Hans turned from the window. “Tell me I have not made a fool’s choice.”