Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [17]
“At me?”
“Well, Bacon is dead.”
Dietrich laughed. “Gregor, every year sees a new art. Only twenty years past, men discovered the art of reading-spectacles. I even spoke with the man who invented them.”
“Did you? What sort of mage was he?”
“No mage. Only a man, like you or I. One who tired of squinting at his psalter.”
“A man like you, then,” Gregor allowed.
“He was a Franciscan.”
“Oh.” Gregor nodded, as if that explained everything.
THE VILLAGERS dragged their buckets and rakes home, or picked through the charred poles and smoking thatch to salvage what they could from the ruins. Langermann and the other gärtners did not bother. There had been little enough in their huts to make their ashes worth sifting. Langermann had however recovered his goat. The cows in the cattle pen, unmilked since morning, complained without comprehension.
Dietrich saw Fra Joachim, smudged black by smoke and gripping a bucket and hurried after him. “Joachim, wait.” He caught up in a few steps. “We will say a Mass in thanksgiving. ‘Spiritus Dómini,’ since the altar is vested already in red. But let us delay until vespers, so everyone can rest from the labor.”
Joachim’s sooty face showed no emotion. “Vespers, then.” He turned away; and again Dietrich caught his sleeve.
“Joachim.” He hesitated. “Earlier. I thought you had run off.”
The Minorite gave him a stiff look. “I went back for this,” he said, rapping the bucket.
“The bucket?”
He handed it to Dietrich. “The holy water. In case the flames proved diabolical.”
Dietrich looked inside. A residuum of water lay in the bottom. He gave the bucket back to the monk. “And since the flames proved material, after all?”
“Why then, one more bucket of water to fight them.”
Dietrich laughed and gave Joachim a slap on the shoulder. Sometimes the intense young man surprised him. “There, see? You do know something of logic.”
Joachim pointed. “And who does logic tell you hauled the buckets that put out the fires in the Great Woods?” A thin, gray pall lingered over the forest.
At that, he resumed his progress toward the church, and this time Dietrich let him go. God had sent Joachim for a reason. A trial of some sort. There were times when he envied the Minorite his ecstasies, the cries of joy he wrang from God’s presence. Dietrich’s own delight in reason seemed bloodless by comparison.
DIETRICH SPOKE with those who had lost their homes. Felix and Ilse Ackermann only stared back dumbly. Everything they had salvaged from the ruin of their home they had wrapped into two small sacks, which Felix and his daughter Ulrike carried across their backs. The child, Maria, clutched a wooden doll, blackened and covered with a rag of scorched fabric. It looked like one of those African men that the Saracens sold at slave markets around the Mediterranean. Dietrich squatted beside Maria.
“No worries, little one. You will stay with your uncle Lorenz until the village can help your father build a new home.”
“But who will make Anna better?” Maria asked, holding the doll up.
“I will take her to the church and see what I can do.” He tried to take the doll gently from the girl’s grasp, but found he had to pry her fingers away.
“All right, you worthless sons of faithless wives! Back to the castle with you. Don’t straggle there! You’ve had yourselves a break in the routine and a bath in the millpond—and high time, too!—but there’s still work wanting to be done!”
Dietrich stepped aside and let the men-at-arms pass. “God bless you and your men, Sergeant Schweitzer,” he said.
The sergeant crossed himself. “Good day to you, pastor.” He gestured toward the castle with a toss of his head. “Everard sent us down to help fight the fires.” Maximilian Schweitzer was a short, thick-shouldered man who, in disposition, reminded Dietrich of a tree stump. He had wandered down from the Alpine country a few years before to sell his sword, and