Eifelheim

“Indeed, I spy his badge on your cloak.” If they had come for him, why had they sent only this one man? Yet, if the message were an order to return to Strassburg with the messenger, he would do so meekly. In the distant fields, some of the peasants had paused at the furrow to stare toward the church. At the hill’s base, the arrhythmic clang-clang of Wanda Schmidt’s hammer had ceased while she watched events transpire above her.

The herald pulled forth a parchment, folded and tied with a ribbon and sealed with wax. This he tossed to the ground at Dietrich’s feet. “Read this at Mass,” the man said, and then, with marked hesitation, “I have more parishes to visit, and should like a pot of ale before I leave.”

That he had no intention of dismounting had become clear. His rouncy was haggard and nearly blown. How many parishes had he already visited, how many more yet to go? Dietrich saw now others packets in the herald’s pouch. “You may pray a horse from the Herr’s stables,” he said with a gesture across the valley.

The messenger said nothing, but regarded Dietrich with wariness. The parsonage door banged open and a bird took sudden flight from the eave, and the herald started with a terrible fear distorting his face.

But it was only Joachim bearing the requested ale. He must have been listening from the window. The bishop’s man regarded the Minorite with suspicion. “No surprise finding one of them in this place,” he sneered.

“I could dip a sponge in the pot and offer you the ale on a hyssop reed,” said Joachim, who had not the reach to hand the mounted man his cup.

The herald bent and snatched the cup from the Franciscan’s hands, quaffed his fill, and tossed it to the dirt. Joachim knelt to retrieve it. “I have offended my lord,” he said, “by offering him not a golden cup studded with emeralds and rubies.”

He was ignored. The herald gestured to the message in the dust. “The pest is come to Strassburg.”

Dietrich crossed himself and Joachim forgot to rise. “God help us all,” Dietrich whispered.

# # #

XXI. June, 1349

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

The Mass, Recordáre, Dómine, was said at nones, and St. Catherine’s filled with the dreadful curious. Burg and dorp alike were there, and the Krenkl’n as well, even those unbaptized, for all knew that some portentious word had reached the pastor. Manfred and his family, forewarned, stood in front to provide an example. Dietrich celebrated jointly with the chaplain, Father Rudolf, a vain and haughty man much consumed with the prestige of his benefice. Yet Rudolf’s pale countenance, like the ruin of a Roman temple, demanded pity and Dietrich gave him the Savior’s words, Be not afraid, for I am with you always.

The bishop’s letter, when read aloud, had not the heart-draining sound of the herald’s flat pronouncement. A few citizens had fallen ill with the unmistakable signs, but not in the vast numbers felled in Paris or, the year before, in Italy. Yet, all parishes were warned to prepare themselves. Special prayers were begged for Strassburg — and for Basel and Berne, for the pest was now known to have been in Berne in February, and in Basel by May.

At this news, A

Into this commotion crawled from the rear of the nave Ilse Krenkerin. Like the Kratzer, she was much weakened by her refusal to drink the elixir, and moved only by use of oddly-shaped crutches; but these she abandoned and went to A

“I know the sentences inside your head,” Ilse told A

After services, Dietrich and Father Rudolf unvested in the sacristy. “The bishop wrote only that it might come here,” the chaplain said. “Only that it might. Not that it would.” He seemed to take much comfort in grammar. “And Strassburg is distant. The Elsass borders on the Frenchreich. Not so distant as Avignon or Paris, but…”

Dietrich said only that such reports were often exaggerated.

For several days thereafter, folk remained shuttered in their cottages or told one another that the pest would not come so high into the mountains. Bad air is heavy, Gregor a

Hans suggested marking the times and locations of the outbreaks on a land-chart, by which Dietrich supposed he meant a portolan. But, as none such existed in the village and most other such charts were symbolic in intent, the suggestion came to nought. The Krenken knew not the geography to compile what Hans called a “true chart.” Still, all men knew that to travel from Berne to Basel to Strassburg was to pass by Freiburg and thus the roads into the High Woods. A turn to the east, and… It had been, withal, a narrow escape.

Ilse Krenkerin died a few days after the Pestilence Mass, and Dietrich sang the Dead Mass for her in St. Catherine’s. Hans, Gottfried, and the other baptized Krenken carried the bier into the church and set it down before the altar. Shepherd attended in silence, for Ilse had been of her party of pilgrims. She paid no mean attention to the ceremony, though whether from reverence or mere curiosity, Dietrich could not say.

Only a few villagers came, as they were for the most part yet huddled in their cottages. Norbert Kohlma

Afterward, the Krenken bore their companion away to be stored in the cold-boxes until her flesh was needed. “I bandaged her wounds,” Hilde said as the Hochwalders watched the Krenken progress the Bear Valley road toward their ship. Dietrich looked at her.

“She was hurt in the shipwreck,” she said, “and I bandaged her wounds.”

Klaus placed an arm around her shoulder, saying, “My wife is tender-hearted,” but she shrugged the arm off.

“Tender-hearted! It was a terrible penance, imposed upon me! Ilse stank, and a snap of her jaws could take my wrist off. Why should I weep for her? She is one burden less for my penance.” She wiped her face with a kerchief, turned, and nearly collided with Shepherd as she fled.

“Explain, Dietrich,” Shepherd said. “All recitation over corpse! All water shaken; all smoke swung and swirled! What you accomplish? What good for Ilse? What good? What good? What I tell her birth-givers?”

She reared her head and clacked her side lips so fast as to make a buzzing that grew sensibly into a musical note, and a remote part of Dietrich’s mind was delighted to learn that a tone was a high frequency of clicks. She leapt away, not toward the fine cottage of Klaus and Hilde, where she had been staying, but out across the resting fields toward the Great Wood. Konrad Unterbaum said, “I never thought them like us before today. But I know her heart; that I do.”