Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [34]
“Not demons, sergeant.” Dietrich had seized hold of Max’s wrist. He glanced at Hildegarde and the injured one. “Men, I think.”
“Men!”
Dietrich held fast. “Think, sergeant! Are there not centaurs, half-man and half-horse? And what of the blemyae of which Pliny wrote—men with their eyes in their torsos? Honorius Augustodenensis described and sketched dozens of such.” The words tumbled and fought each other, as if they fled from his own tongue. “Stranger beings than these grace the very walls of our church!”
“Creatures more talked of than seen!” Yet Dietrich felt the man untense, and so released his knife arm. The sergeant backed away a step, and then another. One more step and he runs, Dietrich thought.
Then would tales run through the village and down the mountainside to pool in the ears of Freiburg; and a commotion would ensue in this quiet fleck of earth. Preachers would find God or Devil in the hearing and announce new heresies. Ecstatics would claim these creatures in visions; philosophers gravely question their existence. Some would in hidden rooms burn incense and pray to their images; others would ready the stake for those who did. Questions would be asked; inquisition would be made. Old matters would be remembered; old names recalled.
A woodleafsinger trilled from the treetop and Dietrich noticed how the monsters shrank from an innocent bird.
“Max,” he said. “Hurry to the parsonage and fetch my bag of salves and my copy of Galen. It’s bound in dark brown leather and has a drawing of a man’s body on the cover.” He doubted Galen had much to say on injuries to demons, but he could not let anyone vomit his life into the dirt without some attempt to save him. “And, Max,” he said, calling after the man. “Tell no one what we have seen. We want no panic. If anyone asks, say that … that these strangers may carry the pest.”
Max gave him a serious look. “You’d warn them of the pest to stay a panic?”
“Then tell them something else. Leprosy. Only keep them away. We have need of cool heads. Now hurry—and bring my salves.”
Dietrich slid down the face of the ridge to where the creatures stood, now in a compact mob. Some held axes and mallets at the ready, but others bore no arms at all and shrank from him. A stack of logs had been placed to the side of the strange white building, and Dietrich realized that they had been clearing the broken trees from around it. Yet how could such a large building have been erected in the midst of the forest without a clearance to begin with?
He knelt beside the creature that Hilde comforted and moistened his fingers with spit. “On the condition that you have led a just and good life, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” He traced a cross on the thing’s brow. “Amen,” said Hildegarde.
Dietrich rose and brushed his habit off, wondering whether he had committed sacrilege. Held Heaven a place for such creatures? Maybe, had they souls. He could make nothing of the injured one’s featureless gaze; could not, indeed, know if it was gazing or not, as there were no lids to the faceted hemispheres. The others had not turned a head while he gave their fellow a conditional baptism. Yet he had the uneasy feeling that they were all looking directly at him. Their strange, bulging eyes did not move. Could not move, he guessed.
Discovered now, what would these creatures do? That they had sought to remain hidden boded well, for their unnatural presence, demonic or not, must remain secret. Yet, they had built themselves a house on the Herr’s land, so it seemed that they meant to stay, and no secret could keep forever.
2
NOW
Tom
TOM SCHWOERIN was no hermit. He was the sort of man who liked company and, while hardly boisterous, he enjoyed a song and a drink, and there were clubs in town where he had once been a Known Man.
That was before he met Sharon, of course. It would not be fair to call Sharon a wet blanket, but she did put a damper on things. This is not entirely bad. Carbon rods are dampers,