Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [203]
“Why did they stay when their countrymen left?” shouted Becker. “To show us our doom!”
“Silence!”
That was Joachim, employing his preacher’s voice. He strode onto the green, threw back his cowl, and glared at them. “Sinners!” he told them. “Do you want to know why they stayed?” He gestured toward the Krenkl. “They stayed to die!” He let the words echo from the surrounding cottages and Klaus’s mill. “And to give us succor! Who among you has not seen the sick comforted, or the dead buried by them? Who, indeed, has not been nursed by them, save by your own obstinancy? Now you are invited to a greater adventure than any minnesinger’s invention. You are invited to be the New Israel, to pass a time in the wilderness, and possess as your reward the Promised Land. We will bring in the New Age! Unworthy, we are, but we will be purified by trials as we await the coming of John.” Here he dropped his voice and the murmuring crowd fell silent to catch his words. “We will live apart for a time, while Peter leaves and the middle age passes away. There will be many trials; and some among us may be found wanting. We will experience privation and heat and hunger and perhaps the wrath of wild beasts. But it will strengthen us against the day of our return!”
There was a ragged, subdued cheer and a few amens, but Dietrich thought they were more cowed than convinced.
Jaeger took a breath. “Right, then. Now that everyone is here … Lütke! Jakob!” With a great deal of profanity and one or two swipes of his staff, he started his flock moving. “‘Children of Israel,’” he muttered.
Dietrich clapped him on the shoulder. “Those were also a fractious lot, I have read.”
As the others filed past, Joachim came to Dietrich and embraced him. “Fare well,” Dietrich told him. “Remember, listen to Gerlach.”
The hunter, at the wooden bridge cried out, “Heaven, ass, and welkin-break!”
Joachim smiled wanly. “To the peril of my soul.” The others had gone back to the village and the two were alone. Joachim looked back toward the village and a shadow seemed to pass across his features as he took in the mill and the oven, the mason’s yard, the smithy, Burg Hochwald, St. Catherine’s church. Then he brushed at his cheek and said, “I must hurry after,” and shifted the blanket-bundle he wore around his shoulder. “Or I’ll be left, and …” Dietrich reached out and pulled the monk’s cowl up over his head.
“The day is hot. The sun can strike you down.”
“Ja. Thank you. Dietrich … Try not to think so much.”
Dietrich placed his palm on the other’s cheek. “I love you, too, Joachim. Take care.”
He stood on the green watching the monk depart; then he moved to the bridge to catch a final glimpse before they vanished between the shoulders of the autumn fields and the meadow. They bunched up there, naturally, where the way was narrow, and Dietrich smiled, imagining Gerlach’s profanity. When there was nothing more to be seen, he returned to the hospital.
HE MOVED Hans that night out into the open so that the Krenk could gaze on the firmament. The evening was warm and moist, having the characteristics of air, being moved to that state from the corruption of fire, for the day had been hot and dry. Dietrich had brought his breviary and a candle to read by, and he was adjusting his spectacles when he realized that he did not know the day. He tried to count from the last feast of which he was certain, but the days were a blur, and his sleeping and waking had not always matched the circle of the heavens. He checked the positions of the stars, but he had not noted the sunset, nor had he an astrolabe.
“What seek you, friend Dietrich?” Hans said.
“The day.”
“Bwah … You seek the day at night? Bwah-wah!”
“Friend grasshopper, I think you have discovered synecdoche. I meant the date, of course. The motions of the heavens could