Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [110]
Chanting the anthem, Adórna thálamum tuum, Sion, Dietrich led the river of light through the early dawn, along the high street and up the hill toward St. Catherine, where he spied Theresia kneeling in the damp grass beside the church. But as the procession drew nearer, she stood and ran off. Dietrich’s tongue stumbled and nearly lost its place in the anthem, but he sang the line obtulérunt pro eo Dómino as he passed through the church doors, as was customary.
LATER THAT day, a faint yodel from the watch tower on the Oberreid Road announced the approach of a horseman. The Krenken hid themselves at Manfred’s request and did not emerge until the horseman, a messenger from the Strassburg bishop, departed on a fresh horse an hour later.
Berthold had summoned the lords of the Elsass and the Breisgau to meet at Benfeld on the eighth and discuss unrest in the Swiss. “I will be gone a week or more,” Manfred told the ministeriales summoned to his hall. “Too many lords will attend to hope for anything shorter.” Naming Ritter Thierry burgvogt in his absence, and dispatching Bertram Unterbaum to the Swiss to bring back a report, Manfred and his retinue departed the next day.
Rumors swirled in his wake. It was said that Berne had put some Jews on the pyre in November over the well-poisonings, and had written to the Imperial Cities to urge the same action on them. Strassburg and Freiburg had done nothing; but in Basel, the people rioted and, although the council banished the most notorious Jew-baiters from the city, they compelled the council to place the Jews in protective custody on an island in the Rhine.
Dietrich complained to those who had gathered at Walpurga Honig’s cottage to drink her honey-wheat beer. “The Pope commands we respect the persons and property of the Jews. There was no cause for such treatment. The pest never reached the Swiss. It went up through France and into England.”
“Perhaps,” Everard suggested, “because Berne’s swift action scared the poisoners off.”
Berne actually found the poison, it was said. Everard had heard it from Gunther who had overheard the bishop’s messenger. A concoction of spiders, frogs, and the skin of a basilisk had been sewn into thin leather bags that Rabbi Peyret of Chambery gave to the silk merchant Agimet to drop into wells in Venice and Italy. Had he not been captured on his return, he might have done the same in the Swiss.
Dietrich protested. “His Holiness wrote that the Jews cannot be spreading the pest for they themselves die.”
Everard tapped a finger aside his nose. “But not so many of them as of us, eh? Why do you suppose that is? Because they bob up and down while they pray? Because every Friday they air their bedding out? Pfaugh. Besides, the Kabbalists despise their fellow Jews as much as they do us. They’re as secretive as masons and won’t allow other Jews to study the hidden writings.”
And “hidden writings” might be anything. Devil-spells. Recipes for poisons. Anything.
Klaus said, “We should place a guard around our own well.”
“Maier,” said Gregor, “we have here no Jews.”
“But we have them.” And Klaus pointed to Hans, who, though he drank no beer, squatted among them for the tallk. “Just yesterday I saw the one called Zachary standing by the well.”
Gregor snorted. “Do you hear what you are saying, man? Standing by the well?”
Nothing was ever settled when men complained over steins of beer; and Hans said afterward, “I see now how a folk can worry themselves into agitation.” Then, after further thought, he added, “Should they try to banish Krenken as they did Jews, I cannot answer for the outcome.”
ON ST. AGATHA’S Day, Dietrich recited the Mass alone. There were the sick and lame to pray for. Walpurga Honig had suffered a kick from her mule. Gregor’s older son, Karl, was laid up with a fever. And Franz Ambach had asked prayers for the repose of his mother, who had gone to her reward this past month. Dietrich