A Question of Faith

  C L Werner

  It wasn’t the most romantic location to hold a tryst, but the narrow gap between Rolf Wehner’s storehouse and Xaver Maucher’s chicken coop had exhibited the necessary isolation for a clandestine rendezvous. The cackling of Maucher’s chickens wasn’t nearly so annoying as the sharp tongue of Emil Stuckart’s mother and far less painful than the wrath of Renate Altstoetter’s father.

  Emil closed his eyes, trying to will away the worry nagging at his mind. He tried to lose himself in the moment, to savour the touch of Renate’s fingers as they combed through his hair, to revel in the happy little laugh that shuddered across her pursed lips. They had to be careful about noise. If they were too loud, they would upset the chickens and then there’d be a mad scramble to escape before Wehner or Maucher came to investigate the commotion. Strangely, the very danger of discovery made the excitement of being with Renate even more thrilling.

  ‘Do you love me?’ Renate asked, her voice a soft whisper. It was a timid tone, a question that was almost afraid of an answer. Emil saw the dread lurking at the depths of his woman’s lustrous blue eyes. She was a few years younger than him, yet had developed the confidence that Emil possessed, the strength to have an identity beyond the expectations of her parents. A frown flashed across his visage and he held her close against him.

  How many times had she asked him that? Always with that same timidity, always with that same uncertainty. What assurance could he make to her that what they shared was real? Why could he not make her understand that it was no whim, no cruel trick, that he really was devoted to her? What would it take to overcome the poison Juergen had poured into his daughter’s mind?

  He was just letting an answer creep onto the tip of his tongue when the sound of raised voices swept into their little refuge. For a hideous moment, both of the young lovers thought they had been discovered. When that initial terror died away, when the threatened doom failed to close in, a different sort of fear pressed upon them. The commotion was coming from the centre of the village near the temple and Baumann’s tavern. At such a distance, few words were intelligible, but one stood out as though it had been branded into the air with a hot iron.

  Plague!

  Emil felt Renate shivering against him. Exhibiting far more confidence than he felt, he smiled at her and stroked her shoulders. ‘Old Hans trying to scare people again,’ he scoffed. ‘Father Anton will have him quieted down soon enough. I’ll slip down there and see if he needs any help.’

  There was a dubious cast in Renate’s eyes as she listened to Emil. She didn’t believe a word of what she’d been told but was shrewd enough to know that nothing good would come from proclaiming the fact. After Emil’s father had died, the village priest had taken great pains to help the Stuckart family recover, assisting them even when no one else would. There was no argument Renate could make that would speak louder than the debt Emil felt he owed to the priest. Instead she gave her lover a fierce kiss farewell. ‘Be careful,’ she said, her heart quivering with an intimation of dread.

  Emil didn’t trust himself to look back as he worked his way down the narrow gap and out onto the dirt road. The little wattle-and-daub huts of Helmstedt flanked the lane to either side, defining it far more than the edging of riverstones some long-ago village reeve had ordered erected and which every reeve since had maintained. Collecting the stones from the River Sol had become something of a festival for the villagers, so few complained about keeping up the tradition.

  Ahead he could see the village square with the hoary old oak planted at its centre, the baron’s granary – the only stone building in the village – stretching along the far side. Baumann’s tavern had been deserted by its usual crop of idlers and the doors to the temple were standing wide open, a circumstance that was unheard of except on religious observations. However, it didn’t take more than a glance to discover the reason for these disturbances.

  A disparate crowd had gathered in the square, converging upon a lone rider leading a heavily laden mule. Strangers in Helmstedt were unusual enough, but this man presented an especially grim aspect. From crown to toe he was draped in black, his body indistinct beneath the oily sheen of a leather coat, his head lost beneath the brim of a physician’s cap. It was the grotesque mask that hid the rider’s face that completed the sinister aura that surrounded him. It was a long beak of leather, like the bill of a rook, with bulbs of garlic and sprigs of holly dangling from its sides.

  Emil’s pace quickened as his mind registered what the stranger was – a plague doktor, one of the macabre healers who pitted their medicine against the ravenous appetite of the Black Death. Like the vultures they resembled, the plague doktors were harbingers of destruction and woe. No omen could have boded greater ill for Helmstedt than the appearance of a plague doktor.

  That sentiment seemed to be the point of contention among the villagers. As Emil drew nearer he could better make out the words his neighbours were grumbling and growling. It was bad enough that the plague doktor had ridden into the village, but no one was eager to compound their misfortune by allowing the man to dismount.

  ‘There’s been no plague here,’ Oskar Heitz was snarling, the wart on his forehead turning a livid purple as his temper rose. ‘We don’t need any truck with your kind!’

  ‘Jackals! Assassins!’ Klaudia Mueller was shrieking at the man. ‘We’ve heard stories about your treatments. We’ve heard about how you scavenge those too sick to beat you off!’

  Though his face was hidden behind the birdlike mask, Emil could almost see the plague doktor’s sneer when he growled back at the mob. ‘Peasants! As though any here have the coin to tempt a rat catcher, much less a learned physician.’

  ‘Do not mock those blessed with humble means, for they are nearer to the grace of Sigmar than any who covets gold.’ The reprimand came in a low whisper that struck with the keenness of a knife. The plague doktor turned in his saddle, cringing somewhat when he saw that this new challenge had been voiced by a man wearing the black robes of a Sigmarite priest. Father Anton was of an unimposing build, a far cry from the robust warrior priests even in his younger years. Yet there was a force of personality etched upon his stern countenance that commanded respect from even the most jaded parishioner. The plague doktor tried to hold Father Anton’s reproachful gaze, but it was an effort beyond his mercenary convictions.

  ‘There are important people in Pfeildorf who need my services,’ the plague doktor explained. ‘It is vital that I reach the city as quickly as possible.’ He waved his gloved hands in an imploring gesture. ‘If these folk will give me the supplies I seek, I will be on my way.’

  Father Anton’s gaze remained unsympathetic. ‘You ride in here stinking of death, fresh from picking over the carcass of some other town or village. You come here with your face hidden against pestiferous vapours, expecting that here too you will find death. Yet is it in your heart to tarry, to render such aid as you might bestow? Holy Sigmar taught that men must be united if we are to overcome the enemies that threaten us. He taught us that we must value one another more than material riches and prideful power.’

  The plague doktor shifted uncomfortably. ‘Father, there are many in the city I will be able to help…’

  ‘Do not spit your lies at me!’ the priest snapped back. ‘You go to Pfeildorf not to heal but to loot! Begone, foul buzzard! You will find no succour here! The pious have no truck with scavengers!’

  Before the plague doktor could deny Father Anton’s accusation, a rock went sailing past the brim of his hat. More stones quickly followed, virtually every peasant in the square throwing rocks at the intruder and his animals. Cursing into the bill of his mask, wincing as rocks struck against his oil-slick coat, the plague doktor wheeled his horse about. A moment later he was galloping out of the square, his mule racing after him.

  The people of Helmstedt hurled jeers at the fleeing stranger long after he was beyond the range of their rocks. Father Anton took the opportunity to preach to the gathered villagers, leading them in a prayer of gratitude to Mighty Sigmar that their god had preserved the village and kept the plague from their community.

  Emil bowed his head, but he couldn’t keep his mind on the prayer. He couldn’t shake the image of the plague doktor, or stop wondering if there might come a time when Helmstedt would be thankful to see such a stranger ride into the village.

  ‘Burn it!’

  The fierce words came boiling across Janos Unger’s flabby lips in a seething hiss. The reeve of Helmstedt’s hand was clenched tightly about the bronze pectoral he wore, the emblem of his position as the baron’s steward. His other hand was a knotted fist that slapped violently against his thigh. In better times, Unger relished the authority he wielded, exhibiting the brand of petty tyranny that made him such an effective administrator for the baron. Now, however, the reeve was sickened by his own commands.

  Two days after the plague doktor was expulsed from the village, the first of the peasants fell ill – Gunthar Starkweiter and his children. They were followed the next day by Kaspar Valten and Ottilia Schenk. From the first, the villagers had feared it was the plague. By the second day, those fears were given voice. Terror swept through Helmstedt, crawling into every hut and hovel.

  As reeve, the peasants had demanded Unger act to protect them from the plague. A simple man, unschooled and unlettered, he was ill-prepared for such action. He was a farmer, not a scholar or phys ician. He didn’t have the learning to fight a plague. All he could do was resort to the resources of his agrarian experience. When a herd of cattle showed signs of sickness, the diseased animals had to be culled so that the healthy might be preserved.

  Gunthar and his brood, Kaspar and Ottilia, and all those who lived under the same roofs as those stricken, had been dragged from their homes and herded into an old barn at the edge of the village. ‘Quarantine’, Unger had called it, hoping the scholarly word would impress his neighbours. Whatever the efficacy of his high-handed posturing, the reeve’s orders had been carried out by a mob too frightened to disobey.

  It was a different matter now. The peasants glanced guiltily at one another as they heard Unger’s draconian pronouncement and the desperate wailing from the condemned within the barn. Isolating the sick, forcing them from their homes, that had been easy enough to justify. But to burn them, to commit deliberate murder? Such dignity as their fear had left inside them quailed at such a crime.

  Unger swept his eyes across the crowd. He could easily read the reluctance in their expressions. He wasn’t an inhuman monster, he had the same qualms. If there was another way he would take it. But as far as he knew, there wasn’t. The sick had to be destroyed so that the healthy would survive. It was as simple and brutal as that. He unclenched his fist and pointed a finger at Rolf Wehner. ‘Put the barn to the torch,’ he said. Unger frowned when Rolf hesitated. ‘The baron will exempt you from the tithe next season,’ he promised, appealing to the farmer’s greed. He knew Rolf’s crop had been poor the previous year and that the peasant was still scrambling to pay back the debts he had incurred over the intervening months. Forgiveness of his next tithe would be a considerable boon for him.

  Displaying no great enthusiasm, Rolf approached the locked barn, a torch blazing in his hand. Before he could reach the building, he was intercepted by Emil Stuckart. The young peasant pushed him aside with a violent shove, almost knocking Rolf to the ground. Emil glared at the farmer then swept his stern gaze across the rest of the crowd.

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ he growled. ‘You can’t do this thing! These are friends and family, not animals!’

  Unger reached for the sword he wore, another mark of the office he held. ‘It is you who have gone mad, Emil!’ he accused. ‘The plague must be kept from spreading! Would you see the whole village infected?’

  The spectre of doom enflamed a mob that had only a moment before been cowed with shame. Snarling like wolves, the villagers converged upon Emil. He tried to fight back as they closed upon him, fending off the first to reach him. When he found himself staring into the enraged face of Renate’s father, Juergen, however, he hesitated. Juergen scowled at Emil, the old hate in his eyes blazing like the flames of a torch. Emil’s father had been the village beadle and Juergen’s back still bore the scars from Otto Stuckart’s whip. The peasant’s hate for the father had simply transferred itself to the son when the beadle died.

  Juergen planted his fist in Emil’s belly, doubling him over in pain. The defenceless Emil was quickly set upon by the other peasants. Beneath a barrage of kicks and punches, he was driven to the ground. Before he was beaten senseless, an imperious voice thundered above the turmoil, commanding the people of Helmstedt with an authority that enjoyed far more respect than that afforded to the baron’s reeve.

  ‘Stop!’ Father Anton cried as he stormed down the street, his black robes billowing about him like the wings of some fearsome raptor. Such was the severity of his expression that none who met his gaze could hold it. One by one, the peasants lowered their eyes and slunk away from the priest’s approach. As the mob fell quiet, the cries of those locked inside the barn filled the silence. Father Anton shook his fist at the crowd.

  ‘You call yourselves men,’ Father Anton scoffed in contemptuous tone. ‘I see only frightened rabbits, too mindless and too terrified to remember what it means to be a man. Where is the dignity that separates man from the beasts of the field and the greenskins of the waste? Where is the valour that endows man with the strength to withstand the evils of Old Night? Where are mercy and charity, the rock of civilisation itself, the foundation upon which Holy Sigmar forged our Empire?’

  Rolf gestured with his torch at the barn. ‘The plague… they are… we will all…’

  Father Anton turned on the farmer, his eyes blazing like embers. ‘You fear the plague more than you fear the judgement of Mighty Sigmar. Is your faith so hollow that it crumbles at the first challenge?’ The priest turned away and wagged his finger at the rest of the mob. ‘To save your flesh you would defile your souls?’ He shook his head. ‘That is the way of the barbarian, the path of those who would be slaves of darkness! Sigmar loosed us from such shackles. Would you so readily put them back on?’

  The priest helped Emil up from the ground while the people of Helmstedt stood around in shamed silence.

  ‘The plague will not be warded off by sermons,’ the reeve declared in faltering tones. ‘We must do whatever must be done to protect ourselves and our families!’

  Father Anton glared at Unger. ‘Faith will defend Helmstedt. Faith in Lord Sigmar is the only protection we need!’

  Instead of wilting before the priest’s conviction, Unger’s defiance was emboldened. ‘Faith in Sigmar did not protect them in Pfeildorf and Nuln, or Wissenburg and Averheim,’ he said. ‘They had lectors and arch-lectors to call upon Sigmar, yet the god didn’t save them. What makes Helmstedt more important than those great cities?’

  Unger’s thoughts disturbed the learned priest. The crowd saw the flicker of uncertainty on the priest’s face and at once the spell he had held over them was broken. Angrily, the peasants began to converge on the barn once more. Father Anton raised his arms, crying out for his parishioners to listen.

  ‘Even the wisest cannot know the minds of gods,’ the priest declared. ‘All we can do is abide by our covenant with them. Perhaps we are not worthy of Sigmar’s intervention – only a charlatan promises miracles. But I can promise that if you murder your neighbours, then this village will be accursed in the eyes of Sigmar.’

  ‘What do we do with the infected?’ Juergen’s voice rose from the mutters of the mob.

  Father Anton smiled benignly at the farmer. ‘Bring them to the house of Sigmar,’ he said. He looked aside when he felt Emil’s hand on his shoulder, giving the youth a reassuring nod when he saw the worry in his face. ‘Let the temple become a refuge for the sick.’

  ‘If you are afraid to have them among you, then I am not afraid to be among them,’ said the priest.

  An atmosphere of desolation clung to the temple more tenaciously than the creeper vines growing along its walls. From the centre of the community, the massive building had become a shunned place. It had become a physical manifestation of the terrible doom that hung over the village: the threat of the Black Plague embodied in mortar and stone. Ominous silence clung to the stone walls, disrupted only by the ringing of the prayer bell. The wails of the sick, the cries of the doomed, the shrieks of the dying, these were mercifully muffled by the thick stone walls. Not a day passed that some family didn’t bring a stricken relation to Father Anton, entrusting their sick to the priest’s care.

  Entrusting? That word brought a scowl to Emil’s face. It was far too fine a concept with which to endow the people of Helmstedt. It invested the village with qualities of faith and hope that had long since been lost. The souls of Helmstedt were barren soil for such beliefs. The people who brought their sick to Father Anton didn’t do so from any faith in Sigmar’s mercy or divine clemency. They weren’t entrusting their sick to the priest, they were abandoning them – divesting themselves of a burden they were too afraid to take on. It was better to let the stricken languish and die in the temple, locked inside those stone walls, away from the good folk of Helmstedt.

  It was enough to turn Emil’s stomach. To save themselves, children abandoned parents, brothers turned against sisters, husbands condemned wives. Terror of the plague had stripped away everything decent until even the last shred of compassion was gone. If this was what it meant to be human, then Emil didn’t wonder that Sigmar and the gods were indifferent to mankind’s suffering.

 

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