Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [133]
“It’s not that,” Dietrich told him. “It’s the display of vanity and pride that is objectionable.”
“You will thank God for all the vanity and pride,” said Max, “when you must trust your lives and property to the skills they practice here.”
“It is to their skills that our lives and properties are usually forfeit,” Dietrich said. “I think folk may one day be thankful more for the skills that natural philosophers practice.”
Kunigund, who was queen of love and beauty for the contest, tossed her kerchief, and the two knights spurred their mounts with a shout, leveling their lances as they closed. Imein cleverly deflected Eugen’s point with a feat of his shield, and caught the other full on with his own. Eugen flew over his horse’s rump and lay stunned on the field until the attendants carried him off. Kunigund rose to go to him, but Manfred restrained her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Bwa! We Krenken might enjoy this game,” said Hans, “if the blows were not pulled.”
“Times change,” Max said. “In the old days, the crowd would shout, ‘Be cheerful!’ and applaud any well-turned feat. Imein did good work with his shield in that passage. Very prettily done. But now, you hear them yell. ‘Stab and attack!’” Max suited gesture to his words. “‘Poke out his eyes!’ ‘Chop off his foot!’”
Hans waved his arm across the stands. “They cried no such thing.”
Max leaned forward to watch Thierry and Ranaulf enter the lists. “No, but elsewhere. Here, chivalry is not yet forgotten.”
THAT EVENING, Dietrich ventured into the Lesser Woods behind Church Hill, gathering certain roots and cuttings, the moon and he being both in the proper frame for such a task. A few herbs also had answered to the spring warmth, although the butterheads would not bloom for several months. Some plants he left whole. Others, he sliced and boiled to make a paste. Still others, he ground to powder with a pestle and tied into muslin bags for infusions. He would make of these medicines a gift to Theresia. The unexpected offering would delight her and she would invite him inside to talk and they could restore the life they had had together.
Dietrich prepared the salves and unguents in the kitchen outbuilding, while Joachim prepared also dinner, and the Kratzer warmed himself by the fire. The Kratzer questioned Dietrich closely about the attributes of each specimen, and Dietrich told him that this was a purgative and that was a simple against fevers. The Krenkish phitosopher picked up a root that Dietrich had not yet washed. “Our alchemist,” he said, “considered both too much and too little the future. He never proofed these substances, only those you offered us as food. Perhaps in one of these would have lurked our salvation.”
“Your salvation,” Dietrich told him, “lies in the Bread and in the Wine.”
“Ja,” said the Kratzer, still studying the root. “But bread of what grain? Wine brewed of which fruit? Ach, had Arnold persevered, he might have found the answer in this unpromising wood.”
“One doubts so,” said Dietrich. “That is mandrake, and a poison.”
“As we will all learn,” Joachim said from the kettle, “if you let it into my stew.”
“A poison,” said the Kratzer.
Dietrich spoke. “Doch. I have lately learned that it induces sleep and a relief from pain.”
“Yet, that which poisons you may sustain us,” the Kratzer said. “Arnold should have continued his proofings. Our physician has not his skill at alchemy.”
“What was it Arnold sought?”
The Kratzer rubbed his forearms slowly. “Something to sustain us until our salvation.”
“The Word of God, then,” said Joachim from the fireplace.
“Our daily bread,” said the Kratzer.
Dietrich thought the concordance too neat. The words he heard the Kratzer speak were only those that the Heinzelmännchen had matched to Krenkish clicks and hums. “What means ‘salvation’ to you?” he asked the creature.
“That we should be taken from this world to the next, and so to our home beyond the stars, when your lord-from-the-sky at last on Easter comes.”
“Faith is vain,” said Joachim, “without charity. You must follow the Way that is Jesus—shelter