Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [161]
“‘Put away your sword,’” Dietrich quoted self-consciously. “Your attack would hardly allay what fears they nurse.” Hans laughed then clacked into his farspeaker a warning to the others.
He watched the herald turn his mount up the track toward St. Catherine.
Looking about, Dietrich realized that Hans had departed without a sound, a Krenkish ability eerily akin to ghostly vanishing. I must keep the herald from the parsonage, he realized, for the weakening Kratzer lay within. He gathered his skirts and hurried to the head of the path just as the herald reached its top, bringing the man to an abrupt halt. “Peace be with you, herald,” Dietrich said. “What mission brings you here?”
The man searched from side to side, glancing even above his head, and clutched his cloak more tightly about him, though the day was warm. “I carry a message from His Excellency, Berthold II, by grace of God bishop of Strassburg.”
“Indeed, I spy his badge on your cloak.” If they had come for him, why had they sent only this one man? Yet, if the message were an order to return to Strassburg with the messenger, he would do so meekly. In the distant fields, some of the peasants had paused at the furrow to stare toward the church. At the hill’s base, the arrhythmic clang-clang of Wanda Schmidt’s hammer had ceased while she watched events transpire above her.
The herald pulled forth a parchment, folded and tied with a ribbon and sealed with wax. This he tossed to the ground at Dietrich’s feet. “Read this at Mass,” the man said, and then, with marked hesitation, “I have more parishes to visit, and should like a pot of ale before I leave.”
That he had no intention of dismounting had become clear. His rouncy was haggard and nearly blown. How many parishes had he already visited, how many more yet to go? Dietrich saw now other packets in the herald’s pouch. “You may pray a horse from the Herr’s stables,” he said with a gesture across the valley.
The messenger said nothing, but regarded Dietrich with wariness. The parsonage door banged open and a bird took sudden flight from the eave, and the herald started with a terrible fear distorting his face.
But it was only Joachim bearing the requested ale. He must have been listening from the window. The bishop’s man regarded the Minorite with suspicion. “No surprise finding one of them in this place,” he sneered.
“I could dip a sponge in the pot and offer you the ale on a hyssop reed,” said Joachim, who had not the reach to hand the mounted man his cup.
The herald bent and snatched the cup from the Franciscan’s hands, quaffed his fill, and tossed it to the dirt. Joachim knelt to retrieve it. “I have offended my lord,” he said, “by offering him not a golden cup studded with emeralds and rubies.”
He was ignored. The herald gestured to the message in the dust. “The pest is come to Strassburg.”
Dietrich crossed himself and Joachim forgot to rise. “God help us all,” Dietrich whispered.
XXI
JUNE, 1349
The Nativity of St. John the Baptist
THE MASS, Recordare, Dómine, was said at nones, and St. Catherine’s filled with the dreadful curious. Burg and dorp alike were there, and the Krenken as well, even those unbaptized, for all knew that some portentious word had reached the pastor. Manfred and his family, forewarned, stood in front to provide an example. Dietrich celebrated jointly with the chaplain, Father Rudolf, a vain and haughty man much consumed with the prestige of his benefice. Yet Rudolf’s pale countenance, like the ruin of a Roman temple, demanded pity and Dietrich gave him the Savior’s words, Be not afraid, for I am with you always.
The bishop’s letter, when read aloud, had not the heart-draining sound of the herald’s flat pronouncement. A few citizens had fallen ill with the unmistakable signs, but not in the vast numbers felled in Paris or, the year before, in Italy. Yet, all parishes were warned to prepare themselves. Special prayers were begged for Strassburg—and for Basel and Berne, for the pest was now