Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [101]
“Does it please?” Dietrich asked Hans over the private voice-canal they sometimes used with each other. “Dance is one more bond between us.”
“One more barrier. This peculiar ability of yours shows only how different we are.”
“Our peculiar ability?”
“I have no word for it. To accomplish one thing by doing many different things together. Each man sings now different words to different tunes, yet they blend in ways strange but pleasing to our ears. When you and your brother sang to welcome us on your Kermis, the pilgrims could speak of nothing else for days.”
“You do not know harmony or counterpoint?” But even as he spoke, Dietrich realized that they could not. They were a folk who knew only rhythm, for they did not breathe in the same manner as men did, and so could not modulate a voice. With them everything was click or scratch.
Hans indicated the Krenkish leapers. “Geese without a goosehound! When the village honored the new cottages, one man hit a skin, another blew through a tube, a third squeezed air from a bladder, a fourth scraped strings with a stick. Yet all combined into a sound to which the dancers stamped their wooden shoes and slapped their leather hose—without being directed.”
“No one directs your folk now,” Dietrich said, indicating the leapers.
“And they do not leap in … ‘in concert,’ the Heinzelmännchen informs me now of the word. We do not know ‘concert.’ Each of us is alone inside his head, with but a single thought: ‘Because we die, we laugh and leap.’”
HOW LITERALLY Hans meant the proverb did not become clear until the sun warmed the snow on the Epiphany of the Lord. Dietrich was wakened by Wanda, Lorenz’s wife, who dragged him down Church Hill to a hummock of snow just off the high road behind the smithy. There, a small crowd of villagers had already gathered in silence, shivering and blowing into their hands and trading uncertain glances. Lorenz said, “The alchemist is dead.”
And indeed, Arnold lay on his side in a hollow dug into the snow, folded up on himself like those ancient corpses sometimes found in timeless barrows. His nakedness startled Dietrich, as the Krenken disliked the cold even when bundled in fur. In his hand, he clutched a sheet of parchment on which were scratched Krenkish word-signs.
“Wanda saw the foot protruding from the snowbank,” Lorenz said, “and we dug him out with our bare hands.” He held out his palms, red and raw, as if Dietrich might doubt his word and ask for proof. Wanda wiped her dripping nose and looked away from the body. Gregor said, “He was gone when I awoke.”
Seppl Bauer smirked. “One demon less to vex us.”
Dietrich turned and cuffed him smartly. “Can demons die?” he cried. “Who has done this?” He looked from one to another of the small crowd. “Which of you killed this man?”
He received denials on all sides and Seppl rubbed his ear and glowered. “Man?” he cried under his breath. “Where is his ‘crowing rooster’? He sports no manhood.” And indeed, the creature proved more featureless than a eunuch.
Lorenz said, “I think he burrowed into the snow and the cold took him.”
Dietrich studied how the body lay and admitted that there was none of the pungent ichor that served the visitors for blood, no evidence of bruises. He recalled that Arnold was especially melancholic even among the Krenken, and given to solitude. “Has anyone summoned Baron Grosswald from the Hof? No? You, Seppl, go now. Yes, you. Bring Max, too. Someone tell Klaus.” Dietrich turned away to find that Fra Joachim had come down from the parsonage to gaze upon the corpse with dismay.
“He was my best catechumen,” the monk said, dropping to his knees