Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [202]
“Small wonder we are smitten.”
“Many a good truth has been upheld by wicked men for their own purposes. And good men have caused much wickedness in their zealotry.”
“The Armleder.”
Dietrich hesitated. “That was one such case. There were good men among them.” He fell silent, thinking of the fishwife and her boy in the Freiburg market.
“There was a leader among the Armleder,” Joachim said slowly, “called ‘Angelus.’”
Dietrich was a long time silent. “That man is dead now,” he said at last. “But through him I learned a terrible truth: that heresy is truth, in extremis. The proper object of the eye is light, but too much light blinds the eyes.”
“So, you would compromise with the wicked, as the Conventuals do?”
“Jesus said the weeds would grow with the wheat until the Judgement,” Dietrich answered, “so one finds both good men and bad in the Church. By our fruits we will be known, not by what name we have called ourselves. I have come to believe that there is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling up weeds.”
“So might a weed say, had it speech,” said Joachim. “You split hairs.”
“Better to split hairs than the heads beneath them.”
Joachim rose from his rock. He skipped a stone across the millpond. “I will do as you ask.”
THE NEXT day, four-score villagers gathered on the green under the linden, prepared to leave. They had tied their belongings into bundles, which they carried on their backs or in a sack on the end of a pole slung across their shoulder. Some had the stunned look of a calf at slaughter and stood unmoving in the press with their eyes cast down. Wives without husbands; husbands without wives. Parents without children; children without parents. Folk who had watched their neighbors shrivel and blacken into stinking corruption. A few had already started out alone on the road. Melchior Metzger went to Nickel Langermann, who lay on a pallet in the hospital, and embraced him one last time before Gottfried shooed him away. Langermann was too far in delerium to recognize the caress.
Gerlach Jaeger stood to the side and watched the assembly with no small displeasure. He was a short, thickset man with a wiry black beard and many years of the forest in his face. His clothing was rough and he carried several knives in his belt. His walking staff was a thick oak limb, trimmed and whittled to his pleasure. He stood now with both hands cupped over the top of it and his chin resting on his hands. Dietrich spoke to him.
“Will they fare well, do you guess?”
Jaeger hawked and spat. “No. But I’ll do what I can. I’ll train ’em up in makin’ snares and traps, and there’s one or two might know which way the bolt sits in the crossbow’s groove. I see Holzhacker has his bow. And his axe. That’s good. We’ll need axes. Ach! We don’t need a casket full of klimbim! Jutte Feldmann, what are ye thinkin’! We’re goin’ in the Lesser Wood and up the Feldberg. Who d’ye think’ll carry that thing? Herr God in Heaven, pastor, I don’t know what people have in their heads.”
“They have grief and tragedy in their heads, hunter.”
Jaeger grunted and said nothing for a time. Then he raised his head and took his staff in hand. “I guess I count myself lucky. I’ve no woman or kin to lose. That’s luck, I s’pose. But the forest and the mountain, they won’t care about grief, and you don’t want to hie into th’ wilderness with half a mind. What I meant is that they don’t need to take everything with ’em. When the pest has gone, we’ll come back and it will all be here waiting.”
“I’ll not be coming back,” Volkmar Bauer snarled. “This place is accursed.” And he spat for good measure. He was pale and unsteady yet, but stood among those leaving.
Others took up Volkmar’s cry and some threw clods of dirt at Gottfried, who had come also to watch them go. “Demons!” some cried. “You brought this on us!” And the crowd growled and surged. Gottfried snapped his horny side-lips like a pair of scissors. Dietrich feared