Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [97]
Dietrich put his hand up to stop it. “Wait. If ‘in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman,’ how in Christ can I bar anyone from the table?”
“Because,” she answered quite simply, “these demons are neither man nor woman, neither Jew nor Greek.”
“You are a disputatious woman!”
Theresia closed the upper door. “You should rest for the Sunrise Mass,” he heard her say.
Returning to the parsonage, he expressed his frustrations to Joachim and wondered if he might bar the Krenken from some Masses so Theresia and the others would attend. “The simple answer is that you cannot,” the monk replied, “and like much that the Christ taught, the simple answer will suffice. Only schoolmen burden such things with quibbles.” He reached across the table and seized Dietrich’s wrist. “We are engaged in a wonderful task here, Dietrich. Should we bring these henchmen of Satan to the arms of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be far off. And when the Third Age of the World comes—the Age of the Holy Spirit—our names shall be writ in gold.”
But as he lay down to nap until the Sunrise Mass, Dietrich thought, But will Theresia’s name be writ among them?
AS OFTEN happens, fear showed itself in hostility. Theresia threw snowballs at the Krenken whenever she encountered them in the open, having learned of their particular sensitivity to cold. “Of course the cold bothers them,” she told Dietrich after he had chastised her. “They are accustomed to the fires of Hell.” One time, her icy missiles struck a Krenkish child. After this, some of the Krenken, knowing that the mere sight of them would drive her wild, would in acts of petty revenge brave the cold merely to show themselves at her cottage window. Baron Grosswald applied the Krenkish discipline to these transgressors—not for love of Theresia Gresch, but to maintain the precarious peace—and warmth—he had eked from Herr Manfred’s disposition.
Even Joachim was moved to express his disappointment. “Had you asked me who in this village would sit before the Lord,” he said one afternoon while he mended a tear in his habit, “I would have named the herb woman. Lorenz told me she was mute when she arrived with you.”
Dietrich, who was sweeping the floor, paused over sudden memories. “And so for two years more.” He cast a glance at the crucifix on the wall, where Jesus also twisted in torment. Why, O Lord, have you afflicted her so? Job at least was a wealthy man and so may have merited affliction, but Theresia was only a child when you took everything from her. “Her father was a Herr in the Elsass,” he said, “and the Armleder burned their manor down, killed her father and brothers, and raped her mother.”
Joachim crossed himself. “God’s peace upon them.”
“All for the crime of being wealthy,” Dietrich added pointedly. “I do not know if her father was a cruel lord or a kind one, whether he held vast sallands or only a poor knight’s patch. Such distinctions meant nothing to that army. Madness had laid hold of them. They held the type wicked, not the person.”
“How came she to escape? Tell me the mob did not … !” Joachim had gone white and his lips and fingers trembled.
“There was a man among them,” Dietrich remembered, “who had opened his eyes and was desperate to escape their company. Yet he had been, even so, a leader, and could not slip away unremarked. So he asked for the girl as if he would bed her. The uprising had collapsed by then. They were dead men walking, and so without the law, for what greater penalty could be heaped upon them? The others thought he had only taken the child to some private place. By morn, he was many leagues distant.” Dietrich rubbed his arms. “It was through this wicked man that the girl came to me, and I brought her here where the madness had never touched and she could know a little peace.”
“God bless that man,” Joachim said, crossing himself.
Dietrich turned on him. “God bless him?” he shouted. “He slew men and urged others to slaughter. God’s blessing was far from him.”
“No,” the monk insisted quietly. “It was always there beside him. He had