Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [86]
If a man cannot get drunk on such sips as this, he is doomed to eternal sobriety. Why, the question of how a vassal might supply six-and-a-half soldiers to his liege is one to occupy a salon of Jesuits.
Sharon was happy for him, for this steady conduit from Judy meant that he was less in her hair, and she consequently had more time for physics and could shampoo less often. She thought this was what she had wanted and derived some welcome contentment from it. The major drawback, as she saw it, was that Tom would immediately share with her whatever sparkle of data he had been given, which she would acknowledge in a distracted and sometimes irritable manner. She was sure the information was fascinating in its own way but, like head cheese or scrapple, its enjoyment was an acquired taste.
One evening, while dining at a neighborhood Italian restaurant, Tom “shared” with her a Christmas fruitcake of facts that Judy had stumbled across in a doctoral dissertation on medieval village life. Among the records cited were a few from Oberhochwald in the 1330s. These were mostly those villagers unfortunate enough to come to the attention of the manorial courts, but some were happier cases of boons and grants. Almost as soon as he was off the cell phone and before the red clam sauce could stain his lips Tom was reciting particulars.
He had learned the names of actual people who had lived in “his” village. Being more accustomed to the broad abstractions of cliology, he had seldom encountered any of the folk behind his equations and models. He didn’t know it yet, but he was being seduced by Judy Cao. He was beginning to delight in narrative history.
Thus, one Fritz Ackermann had been fined three pfennig in 1334 for “withdrawing himself from the lord’s common oven”—meaning he had dared to bake his own bread at home. And in 1340, one Theresia Gresch had been granted the right to gather herbs in the common meadow and in the lord’s woods.
Sharon thought the three-pfennig fine a sign of the tyranny of feudalism and said so in greater irritation than the size of the fine warranted, or indeed than Ackermann had probably expressed in paying it. Tom thought of correcting her equation of feudalism with manorialism, but said only, “Try buying your liquor across the bridge in New Jersey and you’ll learn what fine the Lords of Pennsylvania levy for breaking their monopoly if they catch you at it.”
But the lukewarm reception of his glad tidings was something of a damper and Tom felt as if he had been dumped unceremoniously into a cold stream.
The other thing about Judy’s calls that sometimes irritated Sharon was their odd timing. They were as apt to come at one hour of the day as any other. Did that girl never sleep? And of course Tom would leap to answer the ring. It didn’t matter much what he was doing. Clearing the dinner dishes? They could wait. Driving the car? That’s why God invented cell phones. Sharon was the sort who regarded any great display of eagerness as unseemly. Laid back or cool, they used to say, and meant it as compliment. Tom’s grin began to annoy her. A little gravitas would not hurt.
ONE EVENING, while Tom was deep into a travel book on the customs and legends of the Black Forest—one never knew where unexpected gold might lie unearthed—Sharon appeared in front of his recliner, wagging his cell phone at him.
“It’s your new girlfriend,” she said. “Again.”
Tom closed the book on his finger. Sometimes he wasn’t sure how to take Sharon. He would admit this now and then, after a few beers, and if Sharon were not around. They kidded each other a lot, but at times he thought her comments had an edge to them—a thin and delicate edge, because he didn’t always feel the slice right off. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said.
He and Sharon had been together longer than most married couples and so certain customs had grown up between them, much as moss will accumulate on a damp rock or ivy creep up the walls of hallowed halls. They had long ago agreed that possessiveness had