Eifelheim

IX. October, 1348 The Freiburg Markets

During the two weeks that followed Hans’ terrifying revelation, Dietrich again avoided the krenkish encampment; nor did Hans call him over the far-speaker, so at times, he could almost forget that the beasts were there. He tried even to dissuade Hilde from visiting them, but the woman, taking by now an unseemly pride in her ministry, refused. “Their alchemist desires I bring more divers foods, to find those more to their taste. Besides, they are mortal beings, however repulsive.”

Mortal, yes; but wolves and bears were mortal, and one did not approach them lightly. He did not think Max could protect her should the Krenken turn and bite.

Yet, the Krenken spoke, and devised clever tools, so they clearly owned an intellect. Could there be a soul with intellect, but no will? These questions perplexed him, and he wrote an inquiry for Gregor to take to archdeacon in Freiburg.

The Herr had announced on St. Aurelia’s day that he would send a train of wagons to the Freiburg markets to sell his wine and hides and to purchase cloth and other goods. And so a frenzy of activity consumed the village. The large four-wheeled wagons were brought out, trucks and wheels inspected, harnesses repaired, axles rubbed with tallow. The villagers meanwhile studied their own stores for marketable goods, and assembled consignments of hides, tallow, honey, mead and wine as their wit and possessions dictated. Klaus had named Gregor to drive the commune’s wagon.

Dietrich found the mason in the green, seeing to the stowage of the wagons. “Be sure that barrel is tied tight,” Gregor warned his son. “Good day, pastor. Have something for the markets?”

Dietrich handed him the letter he had written. “Not to sell, but give this to Archdeacon Willi”

The mason studied the packet and the red wax seal into which Dietrich had set his signet. “This looks official,” he said.

“Only some questions I have.”

Gregor laughed. “I thought you were the one with answers! You never go into town with us, pastor. A learned man like yourself would find much interest there.”

“Perhaps too much,” Dietrich answered. “Do you know what Friar Peter of Apulia once answered when asked what he thought of Joachim of Flora’s teaching?”

Gregor had ducked under the wagon bed and began greasing the axles. “No, what?”

“He said, ‘I care as little for Joachim as for the fifth wheel of a wagon.’ ”

“What? A fifth wheel? Haha! Ay, thunder-weather!” Gregor had banged his head on the cart’s underside. “A fifth wheel!” he said, sliding out from under. “That’s funny. Oh.”

Dietrich turned to see Brother Joachim stalking off. He started after him, but Everard, who had been overseeing the estate wagons, took Dietrich by the arm. “The Herr has summoned three of his knights to serve as guards,” he said, “but he wants Max to lead a troop of armsmen. Falkenstein won’t plunder the train going down. What does he need with honey — save to sweeten his disposition? But the return might prove too tempting. All that silver would jingle like the preparation bell at Mass and his greed may overcome his prudence. Max is gone to the lazaretto. Take one of the Herr’s palefridi and go fetch him back.”

Dietrich gestured toward his departing houseguest. “I must speak to…”

“The word the Herr used was ‘now.’ Discuss it with him, not me.”

Dietrich did not want to visit the talking animals. Who knew to what acts their instict would drive them? He glanced at the sun. “Max is likely returning even now.”

Everard twisted his mouth. “Or else he’s not. Those were the Herr’s instructions. No one else has his leave to go there, God be thanked, to deal with… them.”

Dietrich hesitated. “Manfred’s told you, hasn’t he? About the Krenken.”

Everard would not meet his eyes. “I don’t know which would be worse: to see them face to face, or to imagine them.” He shivered. “Yes, he’s told me about them; and Max, who uses his head for more than helmet padding, swears they are mortal. For myself, I have a wagon train to organize. Don’t bother me. Thierry and the others arrive on the morrow, and I’m not ready.”

Dietrich crossed the valley to the stables, where Gunther already waited with a fine roadhorse. “It sorrows me,” Gunther said, “that I cannot offer you a jennet.”

Jennets, or palfrey mules, were bred for use by women and clergy and owned a mule’s more stolid disposition. Nettled, Dietrich ignored Gunther’s cupped hands, and mounted from the stirrup. Taking the reins from the startled maier domo, he danced the horse a few paces to show it he was master, then kicked with his heels. He had no spurs — for a commoner to wear them would violate the Swabian Peace — but the horse accepted the thesis and set off at a walk.

On the road, Dietrich took his mount to a trot, enjoying the rhythm of the creature and the feel of the wind on his face. It had been a long while since he had ridden so fine a beast as this, and he lost his thoughts for a time in sheer animal pleasure. But he should not have let his pride master him. Gunther might wonder how a mere parish priest had won such horse skills.

Manfred no doubt had his reasons, but Dietrich wished he had not told Everard about the Krenken. Word would leak out in the end, but there was no point augering holes in the bucket.

At the place where the trees had been blown down, he spied the miller’s jennet, picketed by the stump where Hilde used to leave the food. No other mount was near, but since Max would not have abandoned Hilde, he must have ridden ‘the shoemaker’s black horse.’ Dietrich dismounted, slipped a hippopede onto his palfrey’s hind legs, and set forth on the track that Max had blazed.

Although the day was high, he was soon enveloped in a green gloaming. Spruce and fir reached into the sky, while the more humble hazel, shorn now of their raiment, huddled naked beneath them. He had not gone far when he heard soft, womanly gasps echoing off the trees, as if the forest itself moaned. Dietrich’s heart beat faster. The forest, always menacing, took on a more sinister aspect. Groaning dryads reached to embrace him with dry, naked fingers.

I’m lost, he thought, and he looked about in panic for Max’s signs. He turned and a branch scratched his cheek. He gasped, ran, crashed into a white birch. He twisted away, desperate now to reach his horse. Coming to a swell of ground, he slipped and fell. He pressed his head against the ancient leafy mat and musky earth, waiting for the forest to grab him.

But the expected touch did not come, and he grew slowly aware that the moans had ceased. Raising his head, he saw below him, not the clearing where his horse awaited, but the brook where he and Max and Hilde had paused that first day. Tied to a spindly oak that twisted from the bank of the stream stood two rouncies.

Max and Hilde were there, lacing a codpiece in place, tugging a skirt back down. Max brushed leaves and dirt and fir needles from Hilde’s coverslut, squeezing her breasts while he did.

Dietrich crawled backward, unseen. Max had been right. Sound did carry in the forest. Then, rising, he scrabbled back among the spruce, blundering from clearing to copse until fortune showed him the blazes, and he followed them to where he had left the palfrey.

The jennet he had seen there earlier was gone.

Since Max was returning already to the village, Dietrich headed his mount also homeward, happy that he need not proceed to the lazaretto. But, coming to a bend in the trail, the beast balked. Dietrich clamped the barrel with his thighs until the horse had bolted a few paces back toward the kiln. At that, it calmed somewhat and Dietrich spoke soothingly. The palfrey rolled wild, round eyes and whickered nervously.

“Be still sister horse,” he told her. Fitting the head-harness in place, he said, “Hans. Are you on the kiln trail?”

Only the rustling of pine needles and dry branches fell upon his ears. That, and the inevitable, distant chitterings of the Krenken, which, being so natural a sound, seemed more a part of the forest than had the amorous cries of Hilde Müller in the arms of Max Schweitzer.

“Come no nearer,” said the voice of the Heinzlmännchen in his ear.

Dietrich remained still. The sun was visible through the iron-gray lacework of trees, but stood already lower than he wished. “You bar my path,” Dietrich said.

“Gschert’s — artisans — want for two hundred shoe-lengths of copper wire. Know your kind the art of wire-drawing — question. It must be drawn to the fineness of a pin, with no cracks.”

Dietrich rubbed his chin. “Lorenz is a blacksmith. Copper may lie beyond his art.”

“So. Where finds one a coppersmith — question.”

“In Freiburg,” Dietrich said. “But copper is dear. Lorenz might do the task from charity, but not a Freiburg guildsman.”

“I will give you a copper brick we have mined from rocks near here. The smith may keep whatever is not used for the wire.”

“And this wire will further your departure?”

“Lacking it, we cannot leave. Prying the copper from the ore required only… heat. We have not the means to draw it. Dietrich, you do not have the sentence in your head to do this. I hear it in your words. You will not go to Free Town.”

“There are… risks.”

“So. There are then limits to this ‘charity’ of yours, to this rent you owe the Herr-from-the stars. When he returns, he will thrash those who failed to do his bidding.”

“No,” said Dietrich. “That is not how he rules. His ways are mysterious to men.” And what better proof than this encounter, he thought. He glanced once toward the clouds, as if he expected to see Jesus there, laughing. “Na. Give me the ingot and I will see to its drawing.”

But Hans would not approach him, and left the ingot on the trail.

The wagons set forth the next day across the plateau to the rendezvous point, where they were joined by the wagon from Niederhochwald. Thierry von Hinterwaldkopf commanded the three knights and Max’s fifteen armsmen. Eugen bore the Hochwald banner.

Others joined them along the way: one, from an imperial holding by Stag’s Leap and another from the manor of St. Oswald’s chapel. The chapter provided two more armsmen and Einhardt, the imperial knight, brought his junker and five more armsmen. Thierry, seeing his small force thus augmented, grinned. “’S Blood, I’d almost welcome a sally from Burg Falkenstein!”

From above the gorge, Dietrich heard that eerie whisper in which distant valleys speak — a patois formed from the wind through the naked branches and evergreen needles below, from the rushing brook cascading off the escarpment, from a choir of grasshoppers and other insects.

The wagon track switchbacked down the face of the Katerinaberg. Inhospitable patches of gray stone and barren ground alternated with copses of desolate, wind-shorn beeches. The road ahead would only a few hundred feet below them, but across insuperably steep pitches, so that Dietrich sometimes spied the vanguard coming from the other direction. Footpaths ran off in directions wagons could not follow. He saw ancient stairs carved into the stone hillside and wondered who had cut them?

The bottom, when they reached it, was a wild ravine, tangled with brush and toppled oaks, and flanked on both sides with great overhanging rocks and steep, wooded precipices. A rushing torrent, fed by waterfalls plunging from the heights, crashed and hissed over rocks down its center, turning to mud what little track the wagons had.

“There’s Stag’s Leap,” said Gregor, pointing to an outcropping that jutted out over the gorge. “The story is that a hunter chased a stag through the woods near here and the beast leapt from that crag over to the Breitnau side. You see how the valley pinches up here? Still, it was a wonderful leap, they say. The hunter was in such hot pursuit that he tried to follow, though with less happy results.”

Burg Falkenstein, high upon one of the precipices, held the gorge tight. Bartizans dotted the schildmauer like warts on a toad, and were slit by cruciform ballistaria to give openings for hidden archers. Sentries were silhouettes in the battlement’s crenels; their jibes rendered indistinct by distance. The escort feigned indifference, but they hefted their shields a little higher and kept a tighter grip on their pennoned lances.

“Those dogs won’t sally against knights,” Thierry said after the troop had passed with no more damage than the taunts. “Tough enough to take nuns or fat merchants, but they’d not stand fast in a real battle.”

At the mouth of the gorge, the stream calmed from torrent to murmuring brook and the narrow valley broadened into green meadows. On the heights above, a square tower commanded the view of the countryside. “Falkenstein’s watch-tower,” Max explained. “His burgraf here signals the castle when a party worth plundering passes by. Then Falkenstein sallies forth to block their advance while the men in the watch-tower come out to block the retreat.”

In the broader, softer Kirchgartner Valley, the track from Falkenstein Gorge met the Freiburg High Road. The Hochwalders circled their wagons for the night and built a fire. Thierry told off men to stand watch. “Safe enough to encamp here,” Max told Dietrich. “If von Falkenstein sallies on this side, he must answer to the Graf of Urach, and that means Pforzheim and the whole Baden family.”

“In olden times,” Dietrich told Gregor as they ate their evening meal, “all caravans were like this. The merchants were armed with bows and swords and were sworn to each other by oaths.”

“Were they?” asked Gregor. “Like an order of knights?”

“Very like. It was called a hans or, in the French, a ‘company,’ because they ‘shared bread.’ The schildrake carried the banner at the head of the band — as Eugen does — and the hansgraf exercised authority over his brother-merchants.”

“Like Everard.”

“Doch. Save that caravans in those days were much larger and traveled from fair to fair.”

“Those fairs must have been something to see. Sometimes I wish I lived in olden times. Were robber knights more common than now?”

“No, but there were Vikings from the north; Magyars from the east; and Saracens from their stronghold in the Alps.”

“Saracens in the Alps?”

“At Garde-Frainet. They preyed upon merchants and pilgrims crossing between Italy and France.”

“And now we must go to the Holy Land to fight them!”

Thierry overheard and grunted without humor. “If the Sultan feels like attacking me, I know how to defend myself; but if he leaves me alone, I’ll not bother him. Besides, if God is everywhere, why go to Jerusalem to find him?”

Dietrich agreed. “That’s why we now elevate the Host after the Consecration. So folk will know that God is everwhere.”

“Of that, I would not know,” Thierry continued, “but if Jerusalem was so holy, why did so many return grown wicked?” He tossed his head toward the mouth of the gorge. “You’ve heard the story about him?”

Dietrich nodded. “The devil freed his ancestor from the Saracens at the price of his soul.”

Thierry wiped the juices from his plate with a crust of bread. “There is more to the tale.” He put the plate aside and his junker took it for cleaning. The others at the fire clamored for the tale, so the knight wiped hands on knees, looked around the circling faces, and told them.

“The first Falkenstein was Ernst von Schwaben, a goodly knight endowed with all manly virtues — save that Heaven had denied him a son to carry his name to posterity. He took to cursing Heaven over it, which sorely afflicted his pious wife.

“A voice in his dreams told him that to make peace with Heaven, he must take pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The proud Graf was horrified at this terrible penance; but at last he smothered his own desires and departed with Barbarossa on the second great kingly pilgrimage. Before setting forth, he broke his wedding ring and, keeping half, told his wife that if he had not returned in seven years, she should consider their ties no longer binding.

“Na. The German army came to grief and Red-beard drowned; but Ernst pressed on to the Holy Land, where his sword became renowned among the infidels. In one battle, he was captured by the sultan. With each new moon, his captor offered him release if only he would embrace the religion of Mahomet. Naturally, he refused.

“So passed the years until one day, the sultan, impressed with his chivalry and fortitude, released him. He wandered through the desert, always toward the setting sun; until, one night as he slept, the Devil came to him.”

“Hah!” said Gregor in the firelight, “I knew the fiend was in it somewhere.” The serfs who had driven the estate wagons crossed themselves at the dreadful name.

“The Wicked One reminded him that the seventh year would expire on the morrow and his wife would wed his cousin. But he promised to bring him home before the morning, and that he would not lose his soul — provided he slept throughout the journey. So it was that he made his wicked compact.

“The Evil One changed himself into a lion which, when the knight mounted, flew off high over land and sea. Terrified, he closed his eyes and slept — until a falcon’s screech roused him. He looked down horrified, where far below stood his castle. A marriage procession was entering. With a wild roar, the Evil Spirit dashed him down and fled.

“During the banquet, the Grafin Ida noticed this stranger who never turned his sorrowful eyes from her face. When he had emptied his goblet, he handed it to a servant, to present to his mistress. When she glanced inside the cup, she saw… half of a ring.”

Everyone gusted a satisfied sigh. Thierry continued.

“Thrusting her hand into her bosom, she pulled forth the other half of the ring and threw it joyfully into the goblet. Thus were the two halves united, and the wife enfolded in her husband’s arms. A year later she bore him a child. And that is why the family puts a falcon on their arms.”

Everard said, “One almost understands how a man might strike such a bargain.”

“Always the Evil One holds out a lesser good,” said Dietrich, “hoping to turn our hearts from the greater. But a man cannot lose his soul by a trick.”

“Besides,” said Thierry, looking with satisfaction over his audience, “Ernst could have been a saint, and Philip would still be a robber.”

“That was a romantic age,” Gregor suggested. “Those tales I used to hear of Red-beard and that English king…”

“Lion-heart,” said Dietrich.

“They knew how to name their kings back then! And Good King Louis. And the noble Saracen who was friend and foe of the Lion-heart, what was his name?”

“Saladin.”

“A most chivalrous knight,” Thierry commented, “for all that he was an infidel.”

“And where are they now?” said Dietrich. “Only names in songs.”

Thierry drank from his goblet and handed it to his junker to fill again. “A song is enough.”

Gregor turned his head up. “But it really ought to be…”

“What?”

The mason shrugged. “I don’t know. Glorious. To save Jerusalem.”

“Ja. It is.” Dietrich was silent a moment, so that Gregor looked over at him. “The first who took the cross did so from piety. The Turks had destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and barred our pilgrims from the shrines. They were not so tolerant as the Arabs, who held the Holy City before them. But I think many went also for land, and the vision grew soon tarnished. The legates could not find enough volunteers, so that Outremer lacked reinforcement. The Regensburgers assaulted those who took up the cross; and the cathedral chapter at Passau preached a ‘holy war’ against the papal legate, who had come recruiting.”

Gregor threw his head back and laughed. “Stag’s Leap.”

“What?”

“Why, the knights, after chasing the Saracens out of the Alps, forgot to stop and tried to leap all the way to Outremer!”

The Hochwalders entered Freiburg by the Swabian Gate, where they paid the Graf’s tollkeeper an obole for each hide and four pfennigs for each barrel of wine. Walpurga’s honey was taxed at four pfennigs the sauma. “Everything is taxed,” Gregor grumbled as they passed through the portal, “except the good pastor.”

The party entered a small square called Oberlinden, and so to the tavern called The Red Bear, where Everard arranged for lodgings, “although you, pastor, will probably stay with the chapter at the Dear Lady Church.”

“Always tight with the pfennig,” cried Gregor, who had pulled a casket of clothing from the wagon and set it beside the door to the inn.

“Thierry and Max have taken their men to the schlossberg,” the steward said, indicating the stronghold perched on the hill east of the town. “Bad enough to share a bed with the likes of this gof,” wagging a thumb at the mason, “but the fewer bodies we cram into our room, the more comfortable we’ll all be. Gregor, walk the priest to the minster and pay the guild for a stall in the market. Find where our wagons are to go.” He tossed Gregor a small leather pouch and the mason caught it jingling in mid-air.

Gregor laughed and, taking Dietrich by the elbow, steered him from the inn’s courtyard. “I remember when Everard was just a simple peasant like the rest of us,” Gregor said. “Now he beats the kettledrum.” He looked around and spotted the bell tower rising over the roofs of the modest buildings on the north side of Oberlinden. “This way.”

They breasted a flood of tradesmen, soldiers, guild masters in rich coats of marten; apprentices rushing about their masters’ business; miners from Ore-chest Mountain that gave the town its lead and silver wealth; country knights gawping at the buildings and the bustle; Breisgau spinsters toting baskets of thread for delivery to the weavers; a man wearing the dank smell of the river and balancing a long pole on his shoulder from which dangled a multitude of dripping fish; a “gray monk” crossing the square toward the Augustiner.

The town had been founded in the great silver rush, a hundred and fifty years before. An oath-band of merchants had taken lots fifty shoes by a hundred at an annual rent of a pfennig each, for which each settler received hereditary tenancy, use of the commons and the market, exemption from tolls, and the right to elect the maier and the schultheiss. The liberties had drawn serf and free from the countryside.

From Salt Street, they passed through a narrow alley to Shoemaker Street, pungent with leather and uncured hides. Small rivulets flowed through channels alongside the streets, a restful and cleansing sound.

“Such a great city!” Gregor cried. “Each time I come down here it seems grown bigger.”

“Not so great as Köln,” said Dietrich searching the passing faces for the first widening eyes of recognition, “nor Strassburg.”

Gregor shrugged. “Big enough for me. Did you know Auberede and Rosamund? No, that was before you came. They were serfs who held a manse in common near Unterbach, which they farmed to a gärtner — I have forgotten his name. He ran off to the ‘wild east,’ became a ‘cowknight’ on one of those big cattle drives. I suppose he lives now in a ‘new town’ under Flemish Rights and battles the ferocious Slavs. What was I saying?”

“Auberede and Rosamund?”

“Ach, ja. Well, those two were hard workers, and cunning. At least Auberede was cunning. My father always counted his fingers after he shook her hand. Hah! While the gärtner farmed their land, they dressed some vines belonging to Heyso — that was Manfred’s brother, who held the Hochwald then. They talked him into granting them custody of a storeroom near Oberbach, as well as some of the vines for a half-share in the increase. After a few years, they’d done well enough that he granted them the whole thing as a life income — manse, vineyard, storeroom, plus a wagon and some Flemish horses! Finally, weary of working for half-shares, they convinced Heyso to convert the grant to a lease. They purchased a house in Freiburg with the increase; and one day they moved here with no more farewell than that.”

“Did they ever buy their freedom?”

The mason shrugged. “Heyso never went after them and after a year and a day, they were free. He farmed their strips to Volkmar, as was his right — it was salland, after all; but the women still send a man of theirs to tend the vineyard under the lease, so I think everyone is content with the arrangement.”

“One serf less,” said Dietrich, “is one more manse escheated to the lord. Coin is valued more than hand-service. The folk on a manor were once called a familia. Now, all is money and profit.”

Gregor grunted. “Not enough of it, if you ask me. Here’s the Minster-place.” The square was raucous with the clatter of hammers, creak of pulleys, snap of canvas, curses of workmen, as they erected the booths for the market. Above them soared from the bustling square a magnificent church of red sandstone. Construction had begun soon after the town was chartered, and the nave was built in the style of that day. The choir and transept had been added later in the modern style, but with such skill as to present no clash in overall appearance. The outer walls were adorned with statues of saints beneath protective stone canopies. Under the eaves, modern gargoyles gaped and leered and, during the rains, vomited the water running off the roof. The bell tower ascended three hundred shoes above their heads. Tall windows filled with stained glass lights pierced the walls — so many that the roof seemed to float unsupported!

“I’d think the whole thing would collapse of its own weight,” Dietrich said. “The Beauvais choir vault was only a hundred and fifty-six shoes high, and it collapsed and killed the workers.”

“When was that?”

“Oh, sixty years ago, I think. I heard it spoken of in Paris.”

“Those were more primitive times — and the masons were French. They need all those lights because old-fashioned clerestory is too weak to illuminate the interior. But then, as you said, there is not wall enough left to hold up the roof. So they use those ‘striving-pillars’ to brace the wall and disperse the weight of the roof.” Gregor pointed to the row of outer pilasters.

“You’re the mason,” Dietrich said. “I heard that the Parisians finished their great Church of Our Lady three years ago. I don’t think this one is done yet. The tower wants a spire. Is that the emporium across the square? I think you must go there to have a stall assigned. Which way is the Franciscan church?”

“Straight through Minster Place to the other side of the main street. Why?”

“I have a cross Lorenz made for them, and I thought I’d take them some word of Joachim.”

Gregor grinned. “Why not take them Joachim?”

The monks at St. Martin’s Church were assembling a large crèche in the sanctuary. Francis of Assisi had begun the custom of building a Christmas crèche, and its popularity had lately spread to the Germanies.

“We start placing figures after Martinmas,” the prior explained. The Feast of St. Martin would mark the popular beginning of the Christmas season, though not the liturgical one. “First, the animals. Then, on Christmas Vigil-night, the Holy Family; on Christmas day, the Shepherds; and finally on Epiphany, the Wise Men.”

“Certain church fathers,” Dietrich said, “ascribed the Nativity to March, which would be more reasonable than December if shepherds were watching their flocks by night.”

The monks paused in their labors and looked at each other. They laughed. “It’s what happened that matters, not when it happened,” the prior told him.

Dietrich had no answer, only that it was the sort of historical irony that had appealed to students in Paris and he was no longer a student and this was not Paris. “The calendar is wrong in any case,” he said.

“As Bacon and Grosseteste showed,” the prior agreed. “Franciscans are not backward in natural philosophy. ‘Only the man learned in nature truly understands the Spirit, since he uncovers the Spirit where it lies — in the heart of nature.’”

Dietrich shrugged. “I intended a jest, not a criticism. Everyone talks about the calendar, but no one does anything to fix it.” In fact, since the Incarnation signified the beginning of a new era, it had been symbolically assigned to March 25^th, New Year’s Day, and December 25^th necessarily fell nine months after. Dietrich nodded at the crèche. “In any case, a pretty display.”

“It is not ‘a pretty display,’” the prior admonished him, “but a dread and solemn warning to the mighty: ‘Behold your God: a poor and helpless child!’”

Taken somewhat aback, Dietrich allowed the prior and the abbot to escort him toward the vestibule; proceeding slowly, for the abbot, an elderly man with a wisp of whitish hair ringing his bald headskin, walked with a hobble.

“Thank you, for bringing us word of Brother Joachim,” said the abbot. “We will inform the Strassburg friary.” His eyes pinched in thought. “A devout boy, I recollect. I hope you have taught him the dangers of excess. The Spirituals could use a little restraint.” The abbot glanced side-long at his prior. “Tell him an accommodation may be reached. Marsilius is dead. I suppose you have heard. They’re all dead now, save Ockham, and he is making his peace with Clement. He’s to go to Avignon and beg forgiveness.”

Dietrich stopped short. “Ockham. Do you know when?” He could not imagine Will begging pardon of anyone.

“In the spring. The chapter will meet and make a fomal plea. Clement seeks a way to take him back without making it too obvious what a fool John was to expel him.” The abbot shook his head. “Michael and the others went too far when they went to the Kaiser. It is not for us to order the affairs of kings, but to care for the poor and lowly.”

“That,” said Dietrich, “may require you to order the affairs of kings.”

The old man was silent a moment longer before saying mildly, “Have you learned the dangers of excess, Dietl?”

Returning to the Dear Lady Church, Dietrich noticed that one of the fishwives setting up her booth had paused in her labors to watch him. He shivered against the breeze and pulled his hood up and pressed on. When he glanced back, she was tying the tent ropes. He had imagined her interest. People had long forgotten.

The Strassburg diocese governed the Elsass, the Breisgau, and most of the Schwarzwald; but an archdeacon resident in Freiburg spoke in the bishop’s name. Dietrich found the man praying at the Atonement Chapel and thought it a good sign that a man so highly placed should be discovered on his knees.

When the archdeacon crossed himself and rose, he saw Dietrich and exclaimed, “Dietrich, my old! How goes it by you? I’ve not seen you since Paris.” He was a soft-spoken man, gentle in demeanor, and with a pressing urgency to his eyes.

“I have now a parish in the Hochwald. Not so grand as yours, Willi, but it is quiet.”

Archdeacon Wilhelm crossed himself. “God-love-us, yes. Too much excitement down here these past years. First, Ludwig and Friedrich fighting over the crown, then the barons — Endingen, Üsenberg, and Falkenstein -laying waste the Breisgau over God-knows-what for six years—” He gestured at the Atonement Chapel, which the barons had built in token of the peace. “- then the Armleder smashing and burning and hanging. So the madness ran from the imperials, to the Herrenfolk, to the common ruck. God be praised for these ten years of peace — God and the Swabian League. Freiburg and Basel enforce the peace on the barons now, and Zürich, Bern, Konstanz, and Strassburg have joined, as you may have heard. Come walk with me. Have you heard from Aureoli or Buridan or any of the others? Did they survive the pest?”

“I haven’t heard. I’m told Ockham is to make his peace.”

Willi grunted and stroked his black and white beard. “Until he picks his next quarrel. He must have dozed when his class discussed ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Maybe the Franciscans don’t teach that at Oxford.”

In the nave, the overhead vault seemed to go on forever and Dietrich saw what Gregor had meant about illuminating the interior. By the tower entrance stood a fine statue of the Virgin flanked by two angels, carved in the old style of the previous century. The stained glass lights were modern, save for the small round ones in the south transept, which were also in the old style. “I have a troubling theological question, your grace.”

“It must be troubling if I’ve become ‘your grace.’ What is it?”

Dietrich handed him the packet and explained in elliptical terms his thoughts regarding the Krenken, whom he described only as strangers of a terrible mien, governed in large measure by instinct rather than reason. Could folk so governed have souls?

“If one is to err,” Willi said, “best to err on the side of caution. Assume they have souls unless proven otherwise.”

“But their lack of reason…”

“You give reason too much weight. Reason — and will — are always impaired to some degree. Consider how a man will pull his hand from the fire without first weighing arguments sic et non. Being subject to habits and conditions does not deprive a being of a soul.”

“What if the being owned the seeming of a beast,” Dietrich ventured, “and not that of a man.”

“A beast!”

“A swine, perhaps, or a horse, or a… or a grasshopper.”

Willi laughed. “Such a vain argument! Beasts possess the souls appropriate to them.”

“And if the beast could speak and build devices and…?”

Willi stopped walking and cocked his head. “Why so agitated, Dietl, over a secundum imaginationem? Such questions make fine school-puzzles in logic, but they have no practical significance. We were made in God’s image, but God had no material body.”

Dietrich sighed and Willi placed a hand on his arm. “But for the sake of old Paris days, I will give the matter thought. That is the problem with the schools, you know. They should teach the practical arts: magic, alchemy, mechanics. All that dialectic is in the air.” The archdeacon waved a hand above his head, fluttering the fingertips. “Na, folk like nothing better than a good disputation. Remember the crowds at the weekly quodlibets? I’ll tell you my first thoughts.” The archdeacon pursed his lips and lifted a forefinger. “The soul is the form of the body, but not as the shape of a statue is formatio et terminatio materiae, for form does not exist apart from material. There is no whiteness without a white object. But the soul is not a form in this simple sense, and in particular, is not the shape of the material it informs. Therefore, the shape of a being does not affect the being’s soul, for then something lower would move something higher, which is impossible.”

“The Council of Vienne declared otherwise,” Dietrich suggested. “The ninth article decreed the soul to be a form as any other form.”

“Or seemed to. Poor Peter Aureoli. He tried so hard to reconcile that decree to the teachings of the Fathers, but that’s what happens when you let a committee of amateurs muck around in these matters. Now, Dietl, give me an embrace and I will part to consider your problem.”

The two wrapped arms for a few moments before granting each other the kiss of peace. “God be with you, Willi,” Dietrich said when they parted.

“You ought to visit Freiburg more often,” the archdeacon said.

Outside the minster, Dietrich craned his neck searching the gargoyles infesting the eaves until he found the one that Gregor had mentioned: a demon clinging to the walls with spindly arms limbs, but with its ass stretched over the plaza. Runnels in the limbs channeled rain water through the figure’s ass onto the market-place below. Folks called it “The Shitter,”

Dietrich’s laughter attracted the attention of a frowsy dame selling smoked fish at a nearby booth in the minster-place. “Good day, t’ye, priest,” the woman said in the accents of the Elsass. “Nothin’ like the Ladychurch where you come from, I wager.”

“No. Nothing like it. But here there is nothing like where I come from, either.”

She gave him a peculiar look. “Contrary, are ye? I knew a man like that once, I did. I could show him a beautiful sunrise and he would quote some Paris high-and-mighty who thought it might be the Earth turning below the sun. Always had a second way to look at things.” She cocked her head and studied him. “I saw y’ before, and y’ favor him some… Here, put your hand here. One thing I’d never forget is the touch of his hand on my breast.”

Dietrich recoiled, and the woman laughed. “But he weren’t no cold fish,” she said. “No he never recoiled from these sweet things. Nor from this more tart one, eh?” She laughed again, but slowly fell quiet. When Dietrich turned away, her voice halted him before he had taken more than a few paces. “They looked for ’im,” she said. “Maybe more’n I did, for they wanted to hang ’im and I didn’t want near that much. I don’t suppose he was the right man for me, anyways, finespoken as he was. They don’t look for him no more, but they might still hang ’im, if they happen on ’im.”

Dietrich hurried across the square to Butter Alley, where he vanished into the nest of streets that led to the Swabian Gate. At the last, he glanced behind and saw that a boy had joined the fishwife — a dark-haired lad of perhaps twelve years, lithe and well-muscled and dressed as a fisherman. Dietrich hesitated a moment longer, but though the boy spoke to his mother, he never lifted his gaze and so Dietrich never saw his face.

Over the next few days, as the market bustled, Dietrich avoided Minster Place. He arranged with a coppersmith to draw the ingot. “Provided,” Dietrich told him, “you draw it fine enough to pass through this eye.” And he held up a device that the Krenk had given him.

The smith whistled. “The gage is surpassing fine, but naturally the finer the draw the less copper I use, so I certainly have the motive.” He laughed a little sharply. Behind him, his apprentice sat on a swing with the drawing pliers in his hand, watching his master negotiate.

“When will it be done?”

“I must draw the wire in several reductions so it does not harden. You see, first I soften it with fire, and hammer a bit of the material through a die-hole. Then my apprentice grips it with the pliers and swings back and forth, pulling with each swing more wire through the hole. But I cannot draw it so fine as this all at once or the strand will break.”

Dietrich was not interested in the finer points of coppersmithing. “So long as the breaks are not hammered together.”

The coppersmith studied the ingot with covert avarice. “Two hundred shoes… Three days.”

In three days, the market would end and Dietrich could leave this town of prying eyes. “That pleases. I will be back in that time.”

He bespoke also a glazier on the cost of repairing the broken church windows and secured a promise from the man to come up the mountain in the springtime. “I hear ye’ve got locusts up there,” the glazier said. “Poor harvest. A fellow down from St. Blasien said he heard locusts all over the Katerinaberg.” The man thought a little more, then added with a wink, “An’ he says the monks at St. Blaisien drove off a demon. Hideous lookin’ creature broke into the store-rooms to steal food. So the monks set a trap one night and repelled it with fire. The demon fled toward the Feldberg, but the monks burned down half their kitchen in the feat.” He tossed his head, laughing. “Burned down half their kitchen. Heh. You folks live near the Feldberg. You didn’t see the creature come to nest, did you?”

Dietrich shook his head. “No, we did not see that.”

The glazier winked. “I think the monks were celebrating the wine harvest. I seen plenty o’ demons that way, myself.”

When the market ended, the wagons departed for the Hochwald with bags of coin, bolts of cloth, and a satisfied smile on Everard’s face. Dietrich did not go with them, for the coppersmith’s promise had proven optimistic. “It just wants a different draw,” the man insisted. “The gauge is so fine that it keeps breaking.” It was a plea to accept a thicker wire, but Dietrich would not hear it.

He misliked tarrying, yet without the wire the Krenken would stay forever, and he had had a vision of what that would mean. They might still hang ’im, if they happen on ’im. He stayed in the chapter house at the minster, dining with Willi and the others, but he never left by the south doors and he never ventured toward the River Dreisam, where the fishermen’s huts lined the autumn-starved flow. He prayed for the woman and for her boy — and for her man, if she had found a new one — and he prayed that he might at least remember her name. Now and then, he wondered if he had mistaken a fishwife’s ribald jape. It had all happened somewhere else. It had all fallen into a shambles under the walls of Strassburg, trampled under the hooves of the Alsatian chivalry, far from the-Breisgau. It asked too much of coincidence that she be here. It demanded too much cruelty of God.

The wire was at last ready on the Commemoration of Pirminius of Reichenau, and Dietrich departed with a party of miners bound for the Ore Chest, accompanying them until their roads diverged and he took the northern route to Kirchgartner Valley. There he found a caravan from Basel, led by a Jew named Samuel de Medina, in the employ of Duke Albrecht.

Dietrich thought De Medina oily and arrogant, but he had a large body of armed guards hired in Freiburg and commanded by a Hapsburg captain with a writ of safe passage signed by Albrecht. Dietrich swallowed his pride and spoke to the Jew’s steward, Eleazar Abolafia who, like his master, spoke a Spanish corrupted by many words of Hebrew. “I don’t forbid you walking with us,” the man said with an air of vexation, “but if you cannot maintain the pace, señor, we leave you behind.”

The caravan set forth the next morning with a jingle of bits and groaning of wagon wheels. De Medina rode upon a jennet suited to his bulk while Eleazar drove a wagon bearing a heavy oak casket. Two mounted men-at-arms rode ahead and another two behind the party. The remainder, all footmen, mixed with the other travelers, now and then glancing into the wagon bed. The party included a Christian merchant from Basel, a factor for a Viennese salt trader, and one Ansgar of Denmark, who wore a pilgrim’s cloak festooned with badges representing the shrines he had visited. He was returning to Denmark from Rome.

“The pest has all but destroyed the Holy City,” Ansgar told Dietrich. “We fled to the hills at the first sign and Heaven had mercy on us. Florence is devastated, Pisa…”

“Bordeaux, too,” said Eleazar from atop the cart. “The pest appeared around the docks, and mayor de Bisquale set the district afire. That was…” He counted fingers. “…second day of September. But the fire burned down most of the city, including my master’s warehouse — also the Chateau de l’Ambriero, where the English stay. The princess Joan was to wed our prince. She was already dead from the pest, I am told, but the fire consumed her body.”

Dietrich and the pilgrims crossed themselves and even the Jew looked unhappy, for the pest slew Christian, Jew, and Saracen with equal disregard. “It has not come to the Swiss,” Dietrich volunteered.

“No,” said the Jew. “Basel was clean when we left. So was Zürich — though that did not stop the town from expelling my people because they thought we might bring it.”

“But…,” Dietrich said, shocked, “the Holy Father has twice condemned that belief.”

Eleazar only shrugged.

Dietrich dropped out of step with the wagon and found himself next to the Basler merchant, who was leading his Wallachian horse. “What the Jew won’t tell you,” the man murmured, “is that the Swiss have a confession. A Jew named Agimet admitted to poisoning the wells around Geneva. He and others had been sent out by the Kabbalists with secret instructions.”

Dietrich wondered how much the story had been embellished in its travels from mouth to mouth. If Christendom possessed krenkish far-talkers, the same story could be told to all, which might not ensure the truth, but would at least ensure that all heard the same lie. “Did this Agimet affirm his confession afterward?”

The merchant shrugged. “No, he denied everything, which proves he was lying; so he was tortured a second time and afterwards affirmed.”

Dietrich shook his head. “Such confessions are unconvincing.”

The Basler remounted his gelding and from that height asked, “Are you then a Jew-lover?”

Dietrich said nothing. The danger was past, now that the bad air had been blown beyond Paris; but fear lingered in those towns that had been spared. Panic fed on rumor; and the pyre fed on panic.

So caught up in his thoughts did Dietrich become that not until he bumped into the back of the Danish pilgrim did he find the caravan halted and the supposed guards, joined by knights under the falcon banner, had encircled the caravan with drawn swords.

On the ground, with his throat neatly slashed, lay their captain. Dietrich remembered that he had come with the Jews from Basel, while the other armsmen had been hired in Freiburg to guard the casket. The dead man wore the Hapsburg eagle on his surcoat, but Dietrich had only that glance before he and the other captives were chivvied like so many sheep up the trail to the gates of Falcon Rock.