Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [53]
“The Herr would not …”
“We hear the words you speak,” the Krenk said. “We see the things you do, and all the words for these things the Heinzelmännchen has mastered. But the words for what is here …” And the creature laid a gracile, six-fingered hand across his stomach. “… these words we do not have. Perhaps we can never have them, for you are so very strange.”
VII
SEPTEMBER, 1348
The Apparition of Our Lady of Ransom
SOME IN the village, when they saw the bruises that their priest had endured at the hands of those he had sought to help, wished to drive the “lepers” from the Great Woods; but Herr Manfred von Hochwald declared that none might trespass there save by his grace. He stood a squad of armsmen on the Bear Valley road to turn back any who, from curiosity or revenge, sought the lazaretto. In the following days, Schweitzer’s men turned back Oliver, the baker’s son, with several other young men of the village; Theresia Gresch and her basket of herbs; and, to Dietrich’s astonishment, Fra Joachim of Herbholzheim.
The motives of young Oliver and his friends were easily known. The deeds of knights were their bread and ale. Oliver grew his hair to shoulder length to ape his betters, and wore his knife tucked swordlike into his belt. The love of a good fight quickened them, and revenge for their pastor provided but a finer-sounding reason for fist and cudgel. Dietrich gave them a tongue lashing and told them that if he could forgive those who struck him, they could do likewise.
The motives that drove Theresia toward the Great Wood were at once more transparent and more opaque, for in her herb basket she had placed with the rue and the yarrow and the pot marigold, certain obnoxious mushrooms and the keen knife that she sometimes used to let blood. Dietrich questioned her on these items when Schweitzer’s men had returned her to the parsonage, and proper answers could indeed be found in Abbess Hildegarde’s Physica; yet Dietrich wondered if she had had other employments in mind. The thought troubled him, but he could not logically ask her motives when he had not yet established her purpose.
As for Joachim, the friar said only that poor and landless men needed God’s word more than most. When Dietrich replied that the lepers needed succor more than sermons, Joachim laughed.
WHEN MAX and Hilde went to the lazaretto on St. Eustace Day, Dietrich pleaded that he was still too sore and repaired instead to the refectory of his parsonage, where he ate an oat porridge that Theresia had cooked in the outbuilding. Theresia sat across the table from him, absorbed in her needlepoint. He had beside the porridge a breast of hazel-hen that had been rubbed with sage and bread and a little wine and boiled. The hen was dry in spite of all, and every time he bit into it, his mouth would hurt because his jaw was swollen and a tooth on that side had come loose.
“A tincture made of clove would help the tooth,” Theresia said, “were clove not so dear.”
“How well to hear of absent treatments,” Dietrich muttered.
“Time must be the healer,” she answered. “Until then, only porridges or soups.”
“Yes, ‘O doctor Trotula’.”
Theresia shrugged off the sarcasm. “My herbs and bone-setting are enough for me.”
“And your bloodletting,” Dietrich reminded her.
She smiled. “Sometimes blood wants letting.” When Dietrich looked at her sharply, she added, “It’s a matter of balancing the humors.”
Dietrich could not penetrate her sentence. Had she intended revenge on the Krenken? Blood for blood? Beware the rage of the placid, for it smolders long after more lively flames have died.
He took another bite of hazel-hen and placed a hand against his jaw. “The Krenken deal mighty blows.”
“You must keep the poultice in place. It will help the bruising. They are terrible people, these Krenken of yours, to treat you so, dear father.”
The words tugged at his heart. “They are lost and afraid. Such men often lash out.”
Theresia attended her needlepoint. “I think brother Joachim is right. I think they need another sort of aid than that