Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [60]
But his thoughts were disturbed by the sound of shoes on gravel outside the door. “My houseguest returns. It would be better if he does not see you.”
The Krenk leapt to the open windowsill. “Keep this,” it said, tapping his harness. “Using it, we may speak at a distance.”
“Wait. How should I call you? What is your name?”
The great yellow eyes turned on him. “As you will. It will amuse me to learn your choice. The Heinzelmännchen tells me what means ‘gschert’ and ‘kratzer,’ but I have not permitted it to overset these terms into our speech according to their proper meanings.”
Dietrich laughed. “So. You play your own game.”
“It is no game.” And with that, the creature was gone, bounding from the window noiselessly into the Lesser Wood below Church Hill.
VIII
OCTOBER, 1348
Michaelmas to the Feriae Messis
MICHAELMAS CAME and with it the annual court, which the Herr held on the green under an ancient, pale-yellow linden. The tree rustled in the autumn breeze, and women pulled shawls more snugly across their shoulders. To the southeast, dark clouds had gathered over the Wiesen valley, but the air had no smell of rain and the wind sighed in the wrong direction. A dry winter, Volkmar Bauer prophesied, and talk turned to the winter seeding. Each man and woman had worn his best clothing to honor the court: hose and smock carefully darned and nearly clean, but dull against the finery of Manfred and his retinue.
Everard presided at a bench before the great tree, and the jurors sat by to ensure that no custom of the manor was violated. Richart the schultheiss brought forth the Weistümer, the village bylaws, written on parchment and sewn into a book, and he researched it from time to time on the rights and privileges recorded therein. This was no mean task, as rights had amassed over the years like clutter in a shed, and one man might own different rights for different strips of land.
White Jürgen, the vogt, presented his tally sticks and knotted strings and gave an accounting of the lord’s salland for the past harvest year. The free tenants attended this recital with keen interest, comparing the Herr’s increases to their own with the sort of subtle arithmetic available to those who owned no numbers beyond their fingers. Wilimer, the Herr’s clerk of accounts, himself but a few years removed from haying and mowing, transcribed everything in neat miniscule onto a parchment roll of sheets glued together side-to-side. He cast his sums on an abacus and announced that the Herr owed Jürgen twenty-seven pfennig to balance the account.
Afterward, old Friedrich, the steward’s clerk, took account of fines and dues. Like Wilimer, he cast his sums in Fibonacci’s Arabic numbers, but he translated the results into the Roman sort for his fair copy. This introduced grave chance of error, since old Friedrich’s grasp of Latin numbers was little better than his grasp of Latin grammar, where he frequently confused the ablative with the dative. “If I write the words in Latin,” the man had explained one time, “I must write the numbers in Latin also.”
The first fine was buteil for old Rudolf from Pforzheim, who had died on Sixtus Day. The Herr took possession of his “best beast,” a breeding sow called Isabella—and naturally all the men debated whether this was in fact Rudolf ‘s “best beast,” rendering a variety of opinions, no two of which were compatible.
Felix Ackermann stood to pay merchet on his daughter, but Manfred, who had been following matters from his seat beneath the linden, announced a commutation “in view of the man’s losses in the fire.” This drew admiring murmurs from the assembly; which Dietrich deemed cheaply bought. The Herr could be generous in small matters.
Trude Metzger astonished everyone by paying merchet on herself for the lord’s permission “to marry at will.” This