Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [21]
Dietrich grunted, suddenly tired of baiting the young man, who might have been eight or nine when the mobs rampaged. “Be wary,” he said, “of unlocking such passions as envy.”
Joachim stalked away from him, but turned after a few paces. “It was still a good thing to say.” He left, and Dietrich gave thanks that the younger man had not asked the same question of him. Where were you, Dietrich, when the Armleder passed through?
A motion to his right drew his attention, but his eyes were dazed by the torch and he could make out nothing but a shape that leapt from behind the church. Dietrich ran to the crest of the hill and held his torch high to illuminate the rocky slope behind, but he saw only the rustle of a wild raspberry bush and a stone that clattered down the hill.
Another movement, this one behind him. He whirled suddenly, caught a glimpse of great glowing eyes, then the torch was knocked from his grasp, and he was tripped to the ground. He cried out over the snapping of twigs and the rustling of leaves as the second intruder fled.
In moments, Joachim and Theresia were at his side. Dietrich assured his rescuers that he was unhurt, but Theresia explored his skull and arms for injuries anyway. When her fingers reached the back of his head, he winced. “Ach!”
Theresia said, “You’ll have a lump there in the morning, but the bone is not fractured.”
Joachim had retrieved Dietrich’s torch and held it so Theresia could see what she was doing. “Are you a chirurgeon, then?” he asked.
“Father taught me herbs and medicines and bone-setting from his books,” Theresia told him. “Put something cold against it, father,” she added to Dietrich. “If you have a headache, take some ground peony root with oil of roses. I’ll blend a compound tonight and bring it to you.”
When she had gone, Joachim said, “She called you ‘father.’”
“Many do,” Dietrich answered dryly.
“I thought she meant … something more.”
“Did you? Well, she was my ward, if you must know. I brought her here when she was ten.”
“Ach. Were you then her uncle? What befell her parents?”
Dietrich took the torch from him. “The Armleder killed them. They burned the house down with everyone in it. Only Theresia escaped. I taught her what I had learned of healing in Paris, and when she turned twelve and became a woman, Herr Manfred granted her the right to practice the craft on his manor.”
“I had always thought …”
“What?”
“I had always thought they had a just grievance. The Armleder, I mean, against the wealthy.”
Dietrich looked into the flames of the torch. “So they had; but summum ius, iniuria summa.”
ON MONDAY, Dietrich and Max set out for the Great Woods to look after Josef the charcoal-burner and his apprentice, neither of whom had been seen since the Sixtus-day fires. The day broke hot, and Dietrich was sodden with his own sweat before they had walked half the distance. A thin haze mitigated the sun’s intensity, but it was small dispensation. In the spring fields, where the harvest army labored on the lord’s salland, Oliver Becker idled in the speckled shade of a broad oak, unmindful of the scowls of his peers.
“The gof,” Max said when Dietrich pointed him out. “Grows his hair long as if he were a young Herr. Sits on his ass all day and watches everyone else do the work because he can pay the shirking-fine. In the Swiss, everyone works.”
“It must be a wonderful country, then, the Swiss.”
Max cast him a suspicious glance. “It is. We have no ‘mine Herrs.’ When a matter needs settling, we gather all the fighting men and take a show of hands, with no need for lords.”
“I thought the Swiss lands were Hapsburg fiefs.”
Schweitzer waved a hand. “I expect Duke Albrecht thinks so, too; but we mountain folk have a different opinion…. You look pensive, pastor. What is it?”
“I fear the hands of all those neighbors, raised together, may impose one day a tyranny weightier than the hand of a single lord. With a lord, at least you know who to bring to account, but when a mob raises its many hands, which holds the blame?”
Max snorted.