Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [200]
Dietrich stared at him. “He sacrificed himself, as the alchemist did?”
“Bwah-wah! Not as the alchemist did. Arnold thought the extra time would gain us the repairs. Well, he was not a man of the elektonikos, and who is to say he was wrong to hope? But Hans acted not from carnal hope, but from love of us who served him.”
Gregor had come up with a parchment bound up in string. He handed it to Dietrich. “This is what the herald dropped.”
Dietrich untied the string. “How long …?” he asked Gottfried. The servant of the elektronik essence shrugged his shoulders as a man might. “Who can say? Heloïse went to the sky in but a few days; the Kratzer lingered for weeks. It is as with your pest.”
“How reads the bill?” Joachim asked, and Dietrich pulled his spectacles from his scrip.
“If there be no priest among us,” he announced when he had finished, “laymen are authorized to hear one another’s confessions.” He raised his head. “A miracle.”
“What miracle,” said Klaus. “That I should confess my sins to the mason, here? That would be a miracle.”
“Na, Klaus,” said Lueter. “I’ve heard you confess after a couple of steins of Walpurga’s brew in you.”
“Archdeacon Jarlsberg writes that there are no more priests to send.”
“A miracle indeed,” said Klaus.
“Half the benefices in the diocese are vacant—because their priests did not run off like Father Rudolf. They stayed with their flocks and died.”
“Like you,” said Klaus. And Dietrich laughed a little at the comment.
Gregor frowned. “Pastor isn’t dead. He isn’t even sick.”
“Nor you, nor I,” said Klaus. “Not yet.”
DIETRICH SAT by Hans’s pallet all day and slept there at night. They spoke of many things, he and the monster. Whether a vacuum existed. How there could be more than one world, since each would try to rush toward the center of the other. Whether the sky was a dome or a vast empty sea. Whether Master Peter’s magnets could make a machine that would never stop, as he had claimed. All those matters of philosophy that had so delighted Hans in happier days. They spoke, too, of the Kratzer, and Dietrich was convinced more than ever that, if love had any meaning in the hidden hearts of the Krenkl, that Hans and the Kratzer had loved one another.
In the morning, the portcullis of the castle opened with a clatter of chains and Richart the schultheiss, with Wilifrid the clerk and a few others galloped furiously down Castle Hill and out the Bear Valley road. Shortly thereafter, the bell in the castle chapel tolled once. Dietrich waited, and waited; but there came no second stroke.
THAT AFTERNOON, the villagers held an irregular court under the linden and Dietrich asked the gathering which of them Ulf had found free of the small-lives. About half raised their hands, and Dietrich noted that they sat for the most part at a distance from their neighbors.
“You must leave Oberhochwald,” he said. “If you stay, the small-lives will invade you, as well. Take also those whose fever has broken. When the pest has gone, you may return and set things aright once more.”
“I’ll not return,” cried Jutte Feldmann. “This place is accursed! A place of demons and sorcery.” There were mutters of approval, but some, like Gregor and Klaus, shook their heads and Melchior Metzger, grown suddenly old, sat on the grass with a grim look on his face.
“But, where would we go?” asked Jakob Becker. “The pest lies all about us. In the Swiss, so also in Vienna, in Freiburg, in Munich, in …”
Dietrich stopped him before he could enumerate the whole world. “Go south and east into the foothills,” he said. “Shun all towns and villages. Build shelters in the forest, keep fires burning, and stay near the fires. Take flour or meal, so you will have bread. Joachim, you will go with them.”
The young monk stared at him open-mouthed. “But … What do I know of the forest?”
“Lueter Holzhacker knows the forests. And Gerlach Jaeger has ranged about hunting deer and wolves.” Jaeger, who had been hunkered down a little