Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [166]
At Angelus the following day, Dietrich approached him as he packed his goods away for the night. “You have something, I fix?” the man asked.
“You are far from home,” Dietrich suggested.
That elicited a cheerful shrug. “Man stay home, man no peddler,” the other replied. “Only Soprón shopkeeper. Sell to neighbors, what profit? What I make, they make. Here, when you see these things like I bring?” He dipped into a coffer and emerged with a white pallium done up in fishes and crosses and edged in bright colors of red and blue. “When see the scarf so fine?”
Dietrich pretended to study the material. “You’d fetch a better price for it in Vienna or Munich than in a little hill dorp.”
The man licked his lips and glanced to the side. He tugged on his moustache. “City guilds no like the peddlers; but here, how often see one?”
“More often than you may think, friend Imre. Freiburg is no great trek.” He did not mention that tales of demons had kept such traffic at bay of late. That Imre might spy an incautious Krenk was a chance to which Dietrich had resigned himself. “Now, if you would return to me Volkmar’s brooch, I will give you a word of advice. Substitutions of base metal are too bald for so small a village, where each man knows his few gauds with greater intimacy than do your city folk.” Imre grinned and dug into his scrip, retrieving the ornament. Dietrich checked the clasp on the back and saw that it had been repaired with considerable skill. “A man of your craft need not resort to such petty theft.” He handed over the tin piece that the peddler had substituted. “If you are once marked a thief, who will trade with you?”
Imre dropped the false brooch into his scrip with a careless shrug. “Men of skill must also eat. Think vogt want me sell for him brooch in Freiburg. Fool wife, keep money.”
“You would be advised to leave,” Dietrich told him. “Volkmar will talk to the others.”
Again, the man shrugged. “Peddler come, peddler go. Otherwise, no peddler.”
“But do not go to Strassburg or to Basel. The pest has appeared there.”
“Oho …” The Magyar looked east, toward Bear Valley. “So. Then I no go those places.”
THE PEDDLER returned to Oberhochwald three days later, although Dietrich did not learn of it until after noon. Manfred himself, riding at exercise with Eugen and one of the castle knights, came upon him on the track from Niederhochwald. Imre declared that he had private words for the Herr, and Manfred led him a little to the side. Eugen sat his horse close by and, on hearing the Herr gasp and thinking him treacherously struck, rendered the peddler senseless with the flat of his sword. This proved an injustice, as Manfred related to a council hastily called afterward in the great hall.
“The pest is come into the Breisgau,” he announced without preamble.
XXII
JUNE, 1349
Until Nones, The Seven Holy Brothers
THE PEST is stalking us, Dietrich thought. It had crept incrementally closer, from Berne to Basel to Strassburg, turning now to Freiburg. Would it come next into the mountains? It had crossed the Alps, so climbing the Katerinaberg would be no great feat.
“This Imre had reached the glade at Church-Garden,” Manfred continued, “where he encountered a party of Freiburgers riding at the canter toward the gorge. There were a dozen, all told: a merchant by his surcoat, his lady, maids and servants in livery, and a few others. They would have trampled our peddler down, had he not pulled his mules aside in haste. A bag fell from their pack horse as they passed, and the merchant ordered a servant to reharness the load, even as he and the others pressed on. The servant worked in terrible haste, spilling clothing and other