Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [27]
Dietrich paged through the bundle. Buridan’s On the Heaven. His Questions on the Eight Books of Physics. A slim volume On Money, by a student named Oresme. Swineshead’s Book of Calculations. The very titles conjured up a swarm of memories and Dietrich recalled for a blinding moment of unbearable longing lost student days in Paris. Buridan and Ockham and he arguing the dialectic over tankards of ale. Peter Aureoli scowling and interrupting with the petulance of age. The free-for-all quodlibets, with the master determing on questions thrown up by the crowd. Sometimes in the rustle of the spruces that surrounded Oberhochwald, Dietrich thought he could hear the disputations of doctors, masters, inceptors, bachelors, and wondered if peace and seclusion had been too high a price to pay.
He found his voice with difficulty. “Mine Herr, I hardly know what …” He felt himself as one of Buridan’s famous asses, uncertain which manuscript to read first.
“You know the price. Commentaries, if you think ’em useful. Suitable for a ‘kettle-head’ like me. You must have your own tractate—”
“Compendium.”
“Compendium, then. When it is finished, I will have it sent to Paris, to your old master.”
“Jean Buridan,” Dietrich said reflexively. “At the school called Sorbonne.” But did he really want to remind Paris where he was?
“So.” Manfred steepled his hands under his chin. “I see we have a Franciscan about.”
Dietrich had been expecting the inquiry. He laid the manuscripts aside. “His name is Joachim of Herbholzheim, from the Strassburg friary, living here now since three months.”
He waited for Manfred to ask why the Minorite was staying in a backwoods parish rather than in the bustling cathedral town of the Elsass, but instead the lord cocked his head and placed a finger alongside his cheek. “A von Herbholz? I may know his father.”
“His uncle, that would be. His father’s the younger brother. But Joachim forswore his inheritance when he took the vow of poverty.”
Manfred’s lip quirked on one side. “I wonder if he gave it up faster than his uncle cut him off. He won’t give me any trouble, will he? The boy, I mean; not the uncle.”
“Only the usual denunciations of wealth and display.”
Manfred snorted. “Let him protect the high woods without the means to support a troop of armsmen.”
Dietrich knew all the counterarguments and saw in the lord’s quickly narrowed gaze that Manfred remembered that he did. The rents and services from the peasantry supported more than armsmen. They supported fine clothing and banquet-feasts and clowns and minnesingers. Manfred kept a household suited to his station and was lavish in its maintenance; and if protection was needed, it lay at the lower end of the valley, at Falcon Rock, far nearer than Mühldorf or Crécy. “I will keep him on a check-rein, sire,” he assured the Herr before old matters could be resurrected.
“See that you do. The last thing I want is an exploratore asking questions and distressing people.” Again, he paused and gave Dietrich a significant look. “Nor you, I should think.”
Dietrich chose to misunderstand the resurrection. “I try not to distress people, but I cannot help asking questions now and then.”
Manfred stared a moment, then he reared his head and laughed, smacking the table with his palm. “By my honor, I’ve missed your wit these past two years.” He sobered instantly and his eyes seemed to look somewhere else without actually turning. “By God, if I have not,” he said more quietly.
“It was bad, then, the war?”
“The war? No worse than others, save that Blind John died a fool’s death. I suppose you’ve heard that tale by now.”
“Charged into the melee roped to his twelve paladins. Who hasn’t heard? An imprudent act for a blind man, I would say.”
“Prudence was never his particular strength. All those Luxemburgers are mad.”
“His son is German King,