Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [196]
Gottfried had dedicated the hospital to St. Laurence, though Dietrich suspected that he meant the late smith, not Sixtus’s deacon. Having been told by Dietrich of the Knights of the Hospital, the creature took to wearing a surcoat with the cross of the Order blazoned on the upper left.
Folk sickened slowly—and suddenly; from coughing fits—and boils. Herwyg One-Eye seemed to blacken before Dietrich’s horrified gaze, as if a shadow had passed across his soul. Marcus Boettcher lingered, like Everard, in agony and convulsions. Volkmar Bauer’s entire family perished: his wife, Seppl, even Ulrike and her newborn babe. Only the vogt himself lived, and he precariously.
Days fell together: Margaret of Antioch, Mary Magdalen, Appolinaris, James the Greater, Berthold of Gasten … Losing track of the feasts, Dietrich celebrated unnamed ferial days.
Burials brought people out. Marcus Boettcher. Konrad Feldmann and both his girls. Rudi Pforzheimer. Gerda Boettcher. Trude and Peter Metzger. At each death, Dietrich rang the church bell. Once for a child, twice for a woman, thrice to signify a man. Who would hear, he wondered? He imagined the peals drifting ever fainter over a landscape devoid of life.
The churchyard filled, and they dug graves in fresh ground that Dietrich consecrated irregularly. Again and again, Dietrich told himself, Not all die. Paris lived, and Avignon. Even in Niederhochwald, a handful had survived. Hilde seemed to grow better, and Little Gregor, and even Volkmar Bauer.
Reinhardt Bent would steal no more furrows from his neighbors, nor Petronella Lürm glean the Herr’s fields. Fulk’s woman, Constanz, died in the sudden fashion. Melchior Metzger led a delirious Nickel Langermann to the hospital. “It isn’t fair,” the young man said, as if blaming Dietrich. “He had the murrain and he grew well. Why strike him this second time?”
“There is no ‘why,’” Hans answered from the bedside of Franz Ambach. “There is only ‘how,’ and that no one knows.”
ULF HAD been working with a device that magnified very small things, by which Dietrich had named it mikroskopion. Through this, Ulf had studied the blood of both the stricken and the hale. One day, when Dietrich had come to the parsonage to wake Joachim for his turn in the hospice, Ulf showed them on the image-slate numberless black flecks of varied shapes and sizes, like dust motes caught in a beam of sunlight. Ulf indicated one particular curl. “This one never appears in hale blood; but always in those stricken.”
“What is it?” Joachim asked, only half-awake.
“The enemy.”
But it was one thing to know the face of the enemy, and quite another to slay him. Arnold Krenk might have succeeded, or so Ulf said. “Yet, we have not his skills. We can but proof a man’s blood and say if the enemy is present within him.”
“Then,” said Joachim, “all who do not yet bear this mark of Satan must flee.”
Dietrich rubbed the stubble on his chin. “And the ill can be restrained from flight, lest they spread the small-lives farther abroad.” He glanced at Joachim, but said nothing of logic. “Ja, doch. It is little enough, but it is something.”
MAX WAS the natural leader of such a flight. He knew the forests better than any but Gerlach the hunter, and was more accustomed to leading men than was Gerlach.
Dietrich went to the Herr’s stables and saddled a sleek, black courser. He had tightened the cinch and was proposing that the beast accept the bit when Manfred’s voice said, “I could have you flogged for your presumption.”
Dietrich turned to find the Herr behind him, bearing a great hunting bird on his left forearm. Manfred nodded toward the horse. “Only a knight may ride a courser.” But when Dietrich began to remove the bridle, he shook his head. “Na, who will care? I came forth only because I remembered