Eifelheim

He is a wiser man than he believes.”

“I don’t understand,” Theresia said, and Dietrich knelt before her.

“He is wise enough to love you. If you understand nothing beside that, it would suffice an Aristotle.”

Gregor walked with him a space toward the mill. “You changed your mind.”

“I never opposed it. Gregor, you had right. Each day may be our last and, whether our time be long or short, the smallest happiness added to it is worth its while.”

At the mill, Klaus dusted his hands with a rag while the mason and the herb woman walked off together. “So?” he asked. “Does Gregor get what he wants?”

Dietrich said, “He gets what he asked for. Pray God they are the same.”

Klaus shook his head. “You are too clever sometimes. Does she know what he wants to do with her? I mean, down there. She is a simple woman.”

“You are grinding wheat today?”

Klaus shrugged. “The pest may kill us all, but there is no reason to starve while we wait.”

That was the third day’s grace.

XXIV. July, 1349

At Primes, The Commemoration of St. Hilarinus

Thursday dawned and the wind blew hot and from the west, hissing through the black spruce and the stirring the half-grown wheat. The heavens faded into a blue so pale as to be alabaster. In the distance, toward the Breisgau, small, dark plumes rose, suggesting fires in the lowlands. The air twisted from the heat, conjuring half-seen, invisible creatures to stalk the land.

Dietrich sat by Joachim’s cot and the young man turned his back so that Dietrich could a

“All men die,” Joachim answered. “It is only a matter of when and how. What concern is it of yours?”

Dietrich set the bowl aside. “I have grown accustomed to having you about.”

As he rose, Joachim twisted to face him. “How goes it with the village?”

“It has been three days, with no further afflictions. Folk are telling one another that the pest has moved on. Many have returned to work.”

“Then my sacrifice has not been in vain.” Joachim closed his eyes and laid his head back. In moments, he was again asleep.

Dietrich shook his head. How could he say that the boy was wrong?

When Dietrich left the parsonage to ready the church for Mass, he saw One-eyed Herwyg, Gregor and his sons, and others were on their way to the field, hoes or mowing scythes across their shoulders. Jakob’s oven was lit, and Klaus’ mill turning. Only the forge stood yet cold and silent.

Dietrich remembered how Lorenz would stand by the anvil, sweaty in his apron, and wave to him from below. Perhaps Wanda had found a man’s task at last too much. Or perhaps she lacked for charcoal.

He made his way downhill, past the sheepfold, where stood a bare handful, all uncertain and with a sickly mien. The decimation of the village beasts had passed barely remarked for the greater dread of the pest. Cattle and sheep had fallen to the murrain. Rats, too, lay about, though that was a blessing. Herwyg’s dog barked, sat, and scratched furiously at his fleas.

Dietrich stepped inside the open-walled smithy, picked up a hammer that lay upon the anvil, and cradled it in his two hands, finding it curiously heavy. Lorenz had swung it one-handed high over his head, yet Dietrich could barely lift it. A barrel of ox-shoes and another of horse-shoes stood nearby. In the quenching barrel, a green film had grown on the suface of the water.

A raven’s cry drew his attention. He watched it circle, drop into the smithy’s back garden, then rise again. And circle.

Dropping the hammer, Dietrich rushed out the rear exit, and there he found Wanda Schmidt sprawled upon her back amidst the beans and cabbage, arms waving as if reaching toward the sky. Her tongue, black and swollen, protruded from dry cracked lips. The raven swooped again, and Dietrich chased it off with a stick.

“Water,” the prostrate woman gasped. Dietrich returned to the smithy, found a cup by the quenching barrel, and filled it. But when he extended the cup to the stricken woman, her thrashing arms batted it away. Her face was red with fever, so he found a rag, soaked it in water, and laid it across the woman’s brow.

Wanda shrieked, arching her back and flailing her arms until she had knocked the cloth aside. Retrieving it, Dietrich found the rag already dry. He crumpled the rag in his hands, and sank to his haunches. Why, O Lord? he pleaded. Why?

Yet that was an impious thought. This pest comes not from God, he reminded himself, but from some mal odour borne on the wind. Everard had breathed it; now Wanda had, too. She had had no late contact with the steward, so the krenkish theory of small-lives jumping from man to man seemed now proven false. Yet there must be reason to it. God had “ordered all things by measure, weight, and number,” and so by measuring and weighing and numbering, mere men could learn the “eternal ordinances by which He set the courses of the stars and the tides of the sea.”

Wanda cried out, and Dietrich edged away. The mere glance of a stricken one could infect. Blue flames shot forth from the eyes. The only safety lay in flight. He scrabbled to his feet, and backed through the smithy to the high street, where he stood breathing rapidly.

Without, all seemed in order. He heard the rasping saw from Boettcher’s cooperage, the sheering cry of a hawk circling high over the autumn fields. He saw Ambach’s pig rooting through the garbage along the high road, the flash off the water dripping from the mill’s paddlewheel. He felt the wind’s hot breath on his cheek.

Wanda was too large a woman to move alone. He must run for help, he told himself. He ran first to the stoneyard, but Gregor had taken his sons out to mow hay. Then, recalling that Klaus and Wanda had lain together, he ran to the western end of the village.

Odo swung the upper door open, but gazed at Dietrich without recognition. “The curse is complete,” the old man said, a riddle he forebore explaining. Dietrich reached past him and, unlatching the lower door, pushed his way inside. “Klaus!” he shouted. Old Schweinfurt stood by the open door, gazing upon the empty street. A groan issued from above, and Dietrich scrambled up the ladder to the sleeping loft.

There, he found the miller upon a three-legged stool drawn close to the bed. The bed boasted a headboard and, at its foot, an oaken chest with iron hinges and carved with the image of a water-wheel. Upon the bed lay a mattress stuffed with ticking and, upon the mattress, lay Hilde.

Her golden hair was twisted and matted with sweat, and her frame racked by coughs. She stared with near-krenkish eyes. “Summon pastor Dietrich,” she cried. “Dietrich!”

“Here,” Dietrich said, and Klaus jerked to that soft statement where he had not reacted to the earlier knocks and shouts. Without turning, he said, “She complained of headaches when she awoke and I thought little of it and went to start the wheel. Then…”

“Dietrich!” cried Hilde.

Dietrich knelt beside the bed. “Here I am.”

“No! No! Bring the pastor to me!”

Dietrich touched her gently on the shoulder, but the woman jerked away.

“She has lost her wits,” Klaus said, in a voice preternaturally calm.