Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [188]
“If we cannot save their lives,” Dietrich said, “we can at least make their dying gentler.”
“A great comfort that must be. Max!” He dusted the parchment and folded it in quarters. In a gobbet of wax poured off a candle, he impressed his signet. He studied the ring afterward, twisting it a little on his finger. Then he looked to little Irmgard who stood close by with her nurse, snuffling through her tears, and he smiled briefly at her. He handed Max the letter and another that he had already finished. “Take these to the Oberreid road and give them to the first respectable-looking travelers you see. One is for the Baden Markgraf, the other for the Hapsburg Duke. Freiburg and Vienna have already their own problems, but they ought to know what has befallen here. Gunther, go with, and saddle a mount for him.”
Max looked unhappy, but he bowed his head and, pulling his gloves from his belt, strode toward the door. Gunther followed, looking, if possible, even less happy.
Manfred shook his head. “I fear death is in this house. Everard fell after he exited this very room. How fares he?”
“Quieter. May I move him to the hospital?”
“Do what you think needful. Do not ask my permission again. I am taking everyone to the schloss. I barred folk from entering the village and none heeded me. Now Odo has brought this on us. The schildmauer at least I can bar against intruders. Each man must look now to his own house and to his own kin.”
Dietrich swallowed. “Mine Herr, all men are brothers.”
Manfred made a long, sad face. “Then you have much work ahead.”
DIETRICH CALLED on Ulf and Heloïse to carry Everard to the makeshift hospital in the smithy. Neither Krenkl had yet accepted Christ. They had stayed, Hans had suggested, because their fear of death in the “gap between the worlds” exceeded their fear of death by starvation. But when he asked Ulf about this, the Krenk only laughed. “I fear nothing,” he bragged over the private canal. “Krenk die. Men die. One must die well.”
“With charitas in the heart.”
An arm toss. “There is no ‘charitas,’ only courage and honor. One dies without fear, in defiance of the Swooper. Not that one believes, naturally, in the Swooper, but it is a saying of ours.”
“Then why did you stay behind when your vessel left, if not from dread of this ‘gap’?”
Ulf indicated the Krenkerin striding ahead of them. “Because the Heloïse stayed. I promised our spouse—Understand you our man-woman-nurse? Good. The nurse stays always at the nest. I swore a … a blood-oath to it that I would by our Heloïse stay. Some truth-seekers claim that the gap lacks time, and so prolongs death forever. The Heloïse feared that above all. By me, is all death the same, and I snap my jaws at it. I stayed because of my oath.”
THE STENCH, when they entered Everard’s cottage, was a palpable thing. The steward lay naked upon his bed, save for a dry, filthy rag placed over his brow. Dark blue-black lines ran up his limbs from the groin and armpits. Of Yrmegard or Witold, there was no sign. Dietrich bent over Everard, thinking him dead, but the man’s eyes flew open and he half-rose in the bed. “Mother of God!” he cried.
“I must lance the boils before we move him,” Dietrich said to Ulf, gently pressing the steward supine. The black rivers of poison running out the arms and legs suggested that he was already too late. “Where are your wife and child?” he asked Everard. “Who cares for you?”
“Mother of God!” The steward clawed at himself, raking his skin with his nails, and shrieking. Then, abrubtly, he lay back quietly, panting and gasping, as if he had repelled an assault from the ramparts and was resting now for the next attack.
Dietrich had washed the knife already in sour wine, and Ulf suggested heating it in the fire as well. The hearth smoldered in sullen red embers. No firewood stood ready. She has fled, Dietrich thought. Yrmegard has abandoned her husband. He wondered if Everard knew.
The boils were as large as apples,