Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [81]
THE CARAVAN set forth the next morning with a jingle of bits and groaning of wagon wheels. De Medina rode upon a jennet suited to his bulk while Eleazar drove a wagon bearing a heavy oak casket. Two mounted men-at-arms rode ahead and another two behind the party. The remainder, all footmen, mixed with the other travelers, now and then glancing into the wagon bed. The party included a Christian merchant from Basel, a factor for a Viennese salt trader, and one Ansgar of Denmark, who wore a pilgrim’s cloak festooned with badges representing the shrines he had visited. He was returning to Denmark from Rome.
“The pest has all but destroyed the Holy City,” Ansgar told Dietrich. “We fled to the hills at the first sign and Heaven had mercy on us. Florence is devastated, Pisa …”
“Bordeaux, too,” said Eleazar from atop the cart. “The pest appeared around the docks, and mayor de Bisquale set the district afire. That was …” He counted fingers. “… second day of September. But the fire burned down most of the city, including my master’s warehouse—also the Chateau de l’Ambriero, where the English stay. The princess Joan was to wed our prince. She was already dead from the pest, I am told, but the fire consumed her body.”
Dietrich and the pilgrims crossed themselves and even the Jew looked unhappy, for the pest slew Christian, Jew, and Saracen with equal disregard. “It has not come to the Swiss,” Dietrich volunteered.
“No,” said the Jew. “Basel was clean when we left. So was Zürich—though that did not stop the town from expelling my people because they thought we might bring it.”
“But …,” Dietrich said, shocked, “the Holy Father has twice condemned that belief.”
Eleazar only shrugged.
Dietrich dropped out of step with the wagon and found himself next to the Basler merchant, who was leading his Wallachian horse. “What the Jew won’t tell you,” the man murmured, “is that the Swiss have a confession. A Jew named Agimet admitted to poisoning the wells around Geneva. He and others had been sent out by the Kabbalists with secret instructions.”
Dietrich wondered how much the story had been embellished in its travels from mouth to mouth. If Christendom possessed Krenkish far-talkers, the same story could be told to all, which might not ensure the truth, but would at least ensure that all heard the same lie. “Did this Agimet affirm his confession afterward?”
The merchant shrugged. “No, he denied everything, which proves he was lying; so he was tortured a second time and afterward affirmed.”
Dietrich shook his head. “Such confessions are unconvincing.”
The Basler remounted his gelding and from that height asked, “Are you then a Jew-lover?”
Dietrich said nothing. The danger was past, now that the bad air had been blown beyond Paris; but fear lingered in those towns that had been spared. Panic fed on rumor; and the pyre fed on panic.
So caught up in his thoughts did Dietrich become that not until he bumped into the back of the Danish pilgrim did he find the caravan halted and the supposed guards, joined by knights under the falcon banner, had encircled the caravan with drawn swords.
On the ground, with his throat neatly slashed, lay their captain. Dietrich remembered that he had come with the Jews from Basel, while the other armsmen had been hired in Freiburg to guard the casket. The dead man wore the Hapsburg eagle on his surcoat, but Dietrich had only that glance before he and the other captives were chivvied like so many sheep up the trail to the gates of Falcon Rock.
X
NOVEMBER, 1348
The Commemoration of Florentius of Strassburg
PILGRIM, MERCHANT, priest, Jew were all one