Eifelheim

XXII. June, 1349

Until Nones, The Seven Holy Brothers

The pest is stalking us, Dietrich thought. It had crept incrementally closer, from Berne to Basel to Strassburg, turning now to Freiburg. Would it come next into the mountains? It had crossed the Alps, so climbing the Katerinaberg would be no great feat.

“This Imre had reached the glade at Church-Garden,” Manfred continued, “where he encountered a party of Freiburgers riding at the canter toward the gorge. There were a dozen, all told: a merchant by his surcoat, his lady, maids and servants in livery, and a few others. They would have trampled our peddler down, had he not pulled his mules aside in haste. A bag fell from their pack horse as they passed, and the merchant ordered a servant to reharness the load, even as he and the others pressed on. The servant worked in terrible haste, spilling clothing and other goods and gathering them up again in clumsy fingers. Imre helped him re-secure it.”

“More likely he yanked it loose as it passed,” said Klaus, and the others tittered nervously.

Manfred did not smile. “That was when the servant told him of the pest, and that hundreds were each day dying in the Freiburg.”

“Did he verify the servant’s tale, mine Herr?” Everard insisted. “Perhaps the man exaggerated. Servants are notorious liars.”

Manfred spared him a curious glance. “Imre reasoned that if a man as educated as a guildmerchant deemed it wise to flee east, he would be a great fool himself to continue west. The servant with the pack horse quickly outdistanced Imre’s mules, yet Imre came upon his load shortly after, scattered along the trail up the gorge. He supposed that the roughness of the trail had caused the pack to come loose again and, lacking his master’s voice in his ear, the servant had this time abandoned all and fled. Imre thought the clothing too fine to lie deserted so he gathered them into his own pack.”

Klaus said, “I misdoubt he helped tie the man’s bundle with that very end in view.” He spoke too quickly and too sharply and rubbed one hand with the other as he looked at each councilor in turn.

“A little farther on,” Manfred continued grimly, “he came upon the body of the merchant’s lady, lying as she had fallen from her horse. Her face was deep blue and distended in agony, and she had vomited black bile over herself. Beside which, her neck was broken in the fall.”

Klaus had no quip his time. Everard had gone pale. Young Eugen caught his lip between his teeth. Baron Grosswald did not move. Dietrich crossed himself and prayed God’s mercy for the unknown woman. “And her husband stopped not to aid her?” he asked.

“Nor the servant. Imre says that in pity he placed over her form a blanket from the abandoned bundle, daring naught else. But,” and Manfred slumped a little in his high seat, “I have not said all. The peddler confessed that he had come west in flight. The pest was in Vie

At that, there were many exclamations. Everard cursed the peddler. Klaus exclaimed that Munich was, after all, many leagues distant, and the malady might travel north into Saxony, rather than west into Swabia. Eugen worried that the pest was surrounding them, east and west. Dietrich wondered about the Jews, who had set off in that direction with the Duke’s escort.

Baron Grosswald, silent until now, spoke up. “Illness stems from countless creatures, too small for thought and borne in divers ways — by touch, on the breath, in the shit or piss, in the spit, or even on the breeze. It matters not which way the roads wind.”

“Such foolishness!” Eugen cried.

“Not so,” said Dietrich, who had heard already this thesis from Hans, as well as from the krenkish physician. “Marcus Varro once proposed that very thing in De re rustica…”

“Which is very interesting, pastor,” said Klaus in a high, tight voice, “but this pest is not like other afflictions, and so may not spread like those of the monsters.” To Gschert: “Can you swear that what you say of your small-lives is true of us? I’ve heard your folk remark more than once on our differences.”

Gschert tossed his arm. “’What may be, may be; but what is, must be.’ I have other concerns than this mal odour of yours. You may live or you may die, however you may deny it, as the luck of the small-lives have it. As for us, we may only die.” The affectless tones of the talking head endowed his pronouncement with a fatal chill. Dietrich wanted to tell the monster that his reasoning had failed, had asserted the consequent. What must be is; but what is need not be, but can through the grace of God be changed.

But Manfred struck the table with the pommel of his dagger. Dietrich marked how white the knuckles were that held it. “Could your physician not mix for us a medicine?” the Herr asked. “If the pest is natural, then the treatment must be natural, and we have no theriac in the village.”

But Gschert shook his head in the human fashion. “No. Our bodies — and yours, I must suppose — have naturally many small lives within, with whom we live in balance. An ‘anti-life’ compound must take careful aim so that only the invader is slain. Your bodies are too strange to us; and we would not know friend from foe among your small-lives, even did our physician know the art. Subtle skills are called for in fashioning a compound to hunt and destroy an invading small-life. To create a new one from whole cloth, and for creatures whose bodies he does not know, is beyond him.”

Silence fell, and Manfred sat still for a time while the others watched. Then he pressed both palms to the table and pushed himself to his feet, and all eyes but Gschert’s turned to him.

“This is what we shall do,” Manfred a

Dietrich took a slow breath and studied his hands. Then he looked up to Manfred. “We are commanded to show charity to the sick.” A low sigh ran around the table. Some cast eyes down with shame; others glared at him.

Manfred rapped the table with his knuckles. “This is not uncharity,” he declared, “since we can do nothing to help them. Nothing! All we can do is allow the pest among us.”

That drew loud exclamations of assent from all save Dietrich and Eugen.

“There are rumors,” Manfred added, “that we harbor demons. Very well. Let it be known. Let the Krenken fly about at will. Let them be seen in St. Blasien and St. Peter; in Freiburg and Oberreid. If folk are too frightened to come here, we may yet keep this… this Death at bay.”

That evening, Dietrich organized a penitential procession for the morn to pray the intercession of the Holy Virgin and St. Catherine of Alexandria. The procession would be barefoot and in rags and the penitents would wear blessed ashes on their brows. Zimmerman would take the great cross down from above the altar and Klaus would carry it on his back. “A bit late for that, priest!” Everard complained when he was told of it. “You were sent to tell us God’s will! Why’d you not warn us of His anger years ago?”

“It is the end of the world,” Joachim said quietly, and perhaps even with satisfaction. “The end of the middle age. But the new age arrives! Peter departs; John comes! Who will be worthy to live through these times?” Yet, the monk’s eschatology perhaps meant no more than Everard’s complaints, or Klaus’ jokes, or Manfred’s severity.