Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [189]
Everard howled and thrashed, striking Dietrich with his fist and knocking the scalpel from his hand. Dietrich knelt, seeing double from the blow, then groped among the rushes for the fallen blade. When he rose, Everard lay on his side, hugging his arms tight against himself and with his knees drawn up. Dietrich walked to the stool beside the bed and sat for a moment, rubbing his temple and thinking. Then he called Hans by the farspeaker.
“There is a basket in my shed, marked with the cross of the Hospitallers,” he told his friend. “Bring to the steward’s cottage one of the sponges you will find in it—but handle it with care. It has been steeped in mandrake and other poisons.”
Hans arrived soon, and stood with the other Krenken to watch. Dietrich moistened the sponge in the water barrel behind the cottage and returned, holding it at arm’s length. Then, as the Savoyard had instructed, he held it firmly against Everard’s nose and mouth while the steward clawed at his hands. Long enough for sleep, the Savoyard had said, but not so long as for death. Everard went suddenly limp, and Dietrich tossed the sponge into the fire. Too long? No, the man’s chest rose and fell. Dietrich crossed himself. “Blessed Jesus, guide my hand.”
The blade’s touch did not awaken the steward, but he groaned and struggled a little. Hans and Ulf held his limbs steady. The boil was tough and Dietrich pressed harder with the point.
Suddenly, it split, and a vile, suppurating black filth oozed forth, bearing with it the most abominable stench. Dietrich clenched his teeth and applied himself to the remaining boils.
When he was done, Heloïse handed him a rag that she had meanwhile boiled and soaked in vinegar. With this, Dietrich mopped up the slime and cleaned the man’s body as best he could. “I would not touch the pus,” Ulf advised, and Dietrich, who had had no such intention, ran outside and bent double, vomiting out that morning’s breakfast and gulping in great gasps of mountain air. Hans, following, touched him briefly several times. “It was bad?”
Dietrich gasped. “Very bad.”
“My …” Hans touched his antennae briefly. “I must wash them.” Then he said, “The steward will not live.”
Dietrich blew his breath out. “We must ever hope, but … I think you are right. His wife has taken their boy and run off. He has none to care for him.”
“Then we will do it.”
They placed Everard on an ambulance that Zimmerman had fashioned, and Ulf and Heloïse took up the handles before and after. Dietrich walked alongside and held the litter steady as they negotiated the hill. He remembered how St. Ephraem the Syrian had fashioned three hundred ambulances during a famine in Mesopotamia. We will need more, he told himself.
Hans stayed to burn all the rags and clothing, and kill whatever small-lives they harbored. Ulf called to him. “Save a portion of the pus for my inspection.”
“Why did you ask that?” Dietrich said as they proceeded down the hill.
“I labored with the instruments in our craft’s lazaret,” Ulf told him. “We have a device, which Gschert left with us, that enables us to see the small-lives.”
Dietrich nodded, though he did not understand. Then he asked, suddenly, “Why do you help us with the sick, if you have no faith in charitas?”
The pagan Krenk tossed his arm. “The Hans is now the Krenkish Herr, so I follow him. Besides it employs my days.”
Which was, withal, a Krenkish sort of answer.
WANDA SCHMIDT died the next day, on the Commemoration of St. Maternus of Milan. She kicked and writhed and bit her own tongue in twain. Black blood welled up from within her and spilled forth from her mouth. She heard not the words of comfort that Gottfried Krenk spoke to her; perhaps she did not even feel the gentle pokes which stood among his kind for caresses.
Afterward, Gottfried accosted Dietrich. “The Herr-from-the-sky would not save the woman of the blessed Lorenz. Wherefore did we pray His aid?”
Dietrich shook his head. “All