Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [154]
Manfred said mildly, “The balance will change before the electoral college need vote again. Yet … No one thought Ludwig would drop dead, either.”
“The Kaiser’s party was hunting in the woods around Fürstenfeld,” Ockham remembered. “I was at the lodge with the others when they brought him in. A peasant found him lying in the field beside his horse, as if he had no more than fallen asleep.”
“A man in the summer of his life, too,” Einhardt said. “Apoplexy, I heard.”
“Too many sausages,” Manfred suggested.
“He did not die hungry,” Ockham admitted.
“Nor will I,” said Einhardt. “This is excellent food, Manfred. Too bad not all of us can enjoy it.” He glanced at Malachai. “Now, what’s this I hear about your guesting demons?”
The question, coming unexpectedly as it did, brought momentary silence to the table.
“I have founded a lazaret in the Great Wood,” Manfred said casually. “The lepers there are hideous in appearance, but are mortal as you or I.” Thierry grinned at nothing; Eugen looked into his cup. Lady Kunigund watched her father. Ockham listened with keen interest. Malachai tugged repeatedly at his beard and his eyes missed nothing.
“Hah. Some o’ your men’ve been spreadin’ tales, then,” Einhardt replied. “Said you brought ’em down to Falcon Rock that time.” The old man turned to his wife and said, “Y’see, my dear? Nothin’ to those stories.”
Lady Rosamund was a fleshy, indignant woman. “Then, what of that thing I saw?” She turned to the Hochwalders. “Since two weeks, I hear a strange clicking from my rose garden, but when I look, I see … I don’t know what. Hideous yellow eyes, enormous arms and legs … Like a giant grasshopper. It leapt from the garden into the sky and flew, flew away in this direction. Then I see my roses chewed on and spat on the ground!”
“A giant grasshopper …” said Malachai slowly.
Einhardt patted her arm. “Some beast had gotten into the garden, dear. That was all.” But he studied Manfred with a cool eye.
ON THE morrow, Dietrich escorted Ockham as far as the pass on the Oberreid road. Ockham led his mule, which he had named “Least Hypothesis,” and he paused and rubbed its nose. He had thrown back his cowl, so that in the dawn his wild hair seemed a laurel of flame against the rising sun. He said, “You’ve let your tonsure grow out, Dietl.”
“I am a simple priest of the diocese now,” he said, “a mendicant no longer.”
Ockham studied him. “You may have foresworn your vow of poverty, but I cannot say you have gained wealth by doing so.”
“Life here has its gifts.”
“Had you learned to flatter the Kaiser, you would need not live in the back woods.”
“Had you learned to live in the back woods, you would need not flatter the Kaiser.”
Ockham smiled faintly and looked off to the east, toward Munich, Prague, Vienna, the capitals of the Great Houses. “A touch,” he said; and, a moment later, “There was an excitement to it, a feeling that we were accomplishing things in the world. ‘If you defend me with your sword,’ I told Ludwig, ‘I’ll defend you with my pen.’”
“I wonder if he would have, had it come to the test.”
Ockham shrugged. “Ludwig had the better of the bargain. But when he has been long forgotten, men will remember me.”
“Is it so bad a thing,” wondered Dietrich, “to be forgotten?”
Ockham turned away and tightened the cinch on the mule’s saddle. “So tell me about demons and grasshoppers.”
Dietrich had seen him study the church roof and knew he had marked the absence of the “gargoyles.” And Einhardt’s lady had described them.
Dietrich sighed. “There are islands farther even than the Canary Islands. The very stars of Heaven are distant islands, and on them live …”
“Grasshoppers,” suggested Ockham, “rather than canaries.”
Dietrich shook his head. “Beings