Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [55]
“That is the man. Klaus uses him in the mill when he has the work.”
“We’ll see if he is as good as your praises make him out. Melchior! Have you gotten the team straight yet? Can you do nothing right?” Trude dropped the reins and strode to the head of the team and yanked the leads from her son’s hands. Leaning into them, she shortly had the team aligned and shoved the reins back at Melchior. “That’s how it’s done! No, wait until I have the plow in hand! God in Heaven, what did I ever do to deserve such gofs? Peter, you missed some clods. Pick up that mattock.” Peter hopped to his feet before his mother could yank his head about as she had the lead ox.
Dietrich picked his way to the road and returned to the village. He thought he might visit Nickel to warn him.
“You do not seem a happy man,” Gregor announced as Dietrich passed the mason’s yard. Gregor had a great stone slab set up on his trestle and he and his sons were working it down.
“I’ve been to Trude in the field,” Dietrich explained.
“Hah! Sometimes I think old Metzger threw himself under the horse to escape her.”
“I think he was drunk and fell.”
The mason grinned without humor. “The prime mover is the same in either case.” He waited to see if Dietrich appreciated his use of philosophical language, then he laughed. His sons, not understanding what a prime mover was, understood that their father had told a jest and laughed with him.
“That reminds me,” Gregor added. “Max has been looking for you. The Herr wants to speak to you, up in the Hof.”
“On what matter, did he say?”
“The leper colony.”
“Ah.”
Gregor worked the stone, striking his chisel with hard, precise strokes. Chips flew. Then Gregor squatted to study the level, running his hand along it. “Is it dangerous, having lepers so close by?” he asked.
“The rot spreads by touch, so the ancients wrote. That is why they must live apart.”
“Ach, no wonder Klaus is in such a state.” Gregor straightened and wiped his hand with a rag tucked into his leather apron. “He fears Hilde’s touch. Or so I’ve heard.” The mason looked at him from under lowered brows. “So does everyone else. She’s had no riding this last month, the poor woman.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Half the village may explode from lust. Was it not Augustine who wrote that a lesser evil may be tolerated to prevent a greater?”
“Gregor, I shall make a scholar of you yet.”
The mason crossed himself. “May Heaven forbid such a thing.”
THE AFTERNOON sun had not yet reached the slit window, and Manfred’s scriptorium lay partly in shadows undispelled by the torches. Dietrich sat before the writing table while Manfred cut in two a Roman apple and proffered half.
“I could order you to return to the lazaretto,” the lord said.
Dietrich took a bite from his apple and savored the tartness. He looked at the candle prickets, at the silver inkstand, at the leering beasts on the arms of Manfred’s curule chair.
Manfred waited a moment longer then he laid the knife aside and leaned forward. “But I need your wits, not your obedience.” He laughed. “They have been in my woods long enough now that I ought to take rent of them.”
Dietrich tried to imagine Everard collecting rents from Herr Gschert. He told Manfred what the servant had said: that their cart was broken and they could not leave. The Herr rubbed his chin. “Perhaps that is just as well.”
“I had thought you wanted them gone,” Dietrich said carefully.
“So I had,” Manfred answered. “But we mustn’t be too hasty. There are things I must know about these strange folk. Have you heard the thunder?”
“All afternoon. An approaching storm.”
Manfred shook his head. “No. That crack is made by a pot de fer. The English had them at Calais, so I know the sound of it. Max agrees. I believe your ‘lepers’ have black-powder, or they know the secret of it.”
“But there