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Joachim pointed. “And who does logic tell you hauled the buckets that put out the fires in the Great Woods?” A thin, gray pall lingered over the forest.
At that, he resumed his progress toward the church, and this time Dietrich let him go. God had sent Joachim for a reason. A trial of some sort. There were times when he envied the Minorite his ecstasies, the cries of joy he wrang from God’s presence. Dietrich’s own delight in reason seemed bloodless by comparison.
Dietrich spoke with those who had lost their homes. Felix and Ilse Ackerma
“No worries, little one. You will stay with your uncle Lorenz until the village can help your father build a new home.”
“But who will make A
“I will take her to the church and see what I can do.” He tried to take the doll gently from the girl’s grasp, but found he had to pry her fingers away.
“All right, you worthless sons of faithless wives! Back to the castle with you. Don’t straggle there! You’ve had yourselves a break in the routine and a bath in the mill pond — and high time, too! — but there’s still work wanting to be done!”
Dietrich stepped aside and let the men-at-arms pass. “God bless you and your men, Sergeant Schweitzer,” he said.
The sergeant crossed himself. “Good day to you, pastor.” He gestured toward the castle with a toss of his head. “Everard sent us down to help fight the fires.” Maximilian Schweitzer was a short, thick-shouldered man who, in disposition, reminded Dietrich of a tree stump. He had wandered down from the Alpine country a few years before to sell his sword, and Herr Manfred had hired him to take his foot soldiers in charge and act against outlaws in the high woods.
“Pastor, what—” The sergeant frowned suddenly and glared at his men. “No one told you to listen. Do you need me to hold your hands? There’s only the one street through the village. The castle is at one end and you’re at the other. Can you figure the rest out yourselves?”
Andreas, the corporal, bawled at them and they moved on in a rough line. Schweitzer watched them go. “They’re good lads,” he told Dietrich, “but they want for discipline.” He tugged at his leather jerkin to straighten it. “Pastor, what happened today? All morning I felt like — . Like I knew there was an ambush laid for me, but not when or where. There was a fight in the guardroom, and young Hertl broke down in sobs in the common room for no reason at all.
And when we laid hand to knife or helm — to anything metal — there would be a short, stabbing pain that—”
“Were any hurt?”
“By such a small dart? Not in the body, but who knows what damage was done to the soul? Some of the lads from back up in the forest, they said it was elf-shot.”
“Elf-shot?”
“Small arrows, invisible, fired by the elves — . What?”
“Well, the hypothesis ‘saves the appearances,’ as Buridan requires, but you are multiplying entities without need.”
Schweitzer scowled. “If that is mockery…”
“No, sergeant. I was but recalling a friend of mine from Paris. He said that when we try to explain something occult, we should not suggest new entities to do so.”
“Well…, elves are not new entities,” Schweitzer insisted. “They’ve been around since the forest was young. Andreas comes from the Murg Valley and he says it might have been the Gnurr playing tricks on us. And Franzl Long-nose said it was the Aschenmä
“The Swabian imagination is a wonderful thing,” Dietrich said. “Sergeant, the supernatural lies always in small things. In a piece of bread. In a stranger’s kindness. And the devil shows himself in mean and shabby dealings. All that shaking this morning and the booming wind and burst of light — all that was too dramatic. Only Nature is so theatrical.”
“But what caused it?”
“The causes are occult, but they are surely material.”
“How can you be so—” Max froze and stepped onto the wooden footbridge that spa
“What is it?” asked Dietrich.
The sergeant tossed his head. “That flock of acorn-jays took sudden flight from the copse on the edge of the woods. Something’s moving about in there.”
Dietrich shaded his eyes and looked where the Swiss had pointed. Smoke hung lazily in the air, like streamers of teased wool. The trees at the edge of the wood cast dark shadows that the climbing sun failed to dispel. Within the motley of black and white, Dietrich spied movement, though at this distance, he could make out no details. Light winked, as one sometimes sees when the sun glints off metal.
Dietrich shaded his eyes. “Is that armor?”
Max scowled. “In the Herr’s woods? That would be bold-faced, even for von Falkenstein.”
“Would it? Falkenstein’s ancestor sold his soul to the Devil to escape a Saracen prison. He has despoiled nuns and holy pilgrims. He badly wants a reining-in.”
“When the Markgraf grows irritated enough,” Max agreed. “But the gorge is too hard a passage. Why would Philip send his henchmen up here? Not for profit, surely.”
“Might von Scharfenstein?” He gestured vaguely toward the southeast, where another robber baron had his nest.
“Burg Scharfenstein’s taken. Hadn’t you heard? Its lord seized a Basler merchant for ransom, and that proved his undoing. The man’s nephew disguised himself as a notorious freelance they’d heard tale of and went to them with word of easy spoils a little ways down the Wiesenthal. Well, greed dulls people’s wits, so they followed him — and rode into an ambush laid by the Basler militia.”
“There’s a lesson there.”
Max gri
Dietrich studied the woods once more. “If not robber knights, then only landless men, forced to poach in the forest.”
“Maybe,” Max allowed. “But that’s the Herr’s lands.”
“What then? Will you go in and chase them off?”
The Swiss shrugged. “Or Everard will hire them for the grain harvest. Why hunt trouble? The Herr will be back in a few days. He’s had his fill of France, or so the messenger said. I’ll ask his will.” He stared a while longer at the woods. “There was a strange glow there, before dawn.
Then the smoke. I suppose you’ll tell me that was ‘nature,’ too.” He turned and left, touching his cap as he passed Hildegarde Müller.
Dietrich saw no more movement among the trees. Perhaps he had seen nothing earlier, only the swaying of saplings within the forest.