For a moment, Dietrich did not speak. “It is hard to forgive such a man,” he said at last, “whatever kindness moved him at the end.”

“Hard for men, perhaps,” Joachim retorted, “but not for God. What befell him afterward? Did the Elsass Duke take him?”

Dietrich shook his head. “No man has heard his name in twelve years.”

The interval between the Vigil-Night and the Epiphany was the longest holiday of the year. The villagers paid extra dues to stock the lord’s banquet table, but were exempt from all handservice, and so a festive spirit came over all. A spruce tree was again erected on the green and hung about with flags and ornaments, and even the meanest cottage did not lack for its dress of holly, fir, or mistel.

But the merry-making did not extend to the Krenken. A too-literal translation of advent into the krenkish tongue had led the stranded travelers to expect the actual arrival of the much-heralded “lord from the sky,” so their disappointment was keen. While he was pleased that the strangers thus looked forward to the Kingdom of Heaven, Dietrich cautioned Hans against naive literalism. “Since thirteen hundred years the Christ is ascended,” Dietrich explained after the Mass for St. Sebastian, while Hans helped him clean the sacred vessels. “His disciples, too, thought he soon would return, but they were mistaken.”

“Perhaps they were confused by the pressing of time,” Hans suggested.

“What! Can time then be pressed like grapes?” Dietrich was both startled and amused, and smacked his lips in Krenk-like laughter while he placed his chalice in its cupboard and locked it. “If time may be ‘pressed,’ then it is a being on which one may act, and being consists of subject and aspect. A thing that is movable alters in its aspect, for it is here, then it is there; it is this, then it is that.” Dietrich wagged his hand back and forth. “Of motions, there are four: change of substance, as when a log becomes ash; change of quality, as when an apple ripens from green to red; change of quantity, as when a body grows or diminishes; and change of place, which we call ‘local motion.’ Obviously, for time to be ‘pressed’ — here long, there short — there must be a change in quality and hence a motion of time. But time is the measure of motion in changeable things and cannot measure itself.”

Hans disagreed. “Spirit travels so fast as the motion of light when there is no air. At such speeds, time passes more quickly, and what is an eye-blink for the Christ-spirit is for you many years. So your thirteen hundred years may seem to him only a few days. We call that the pressing of time.”

Dietrich considered the proposition for a moment. “I admit two sorts of duration: tempus for the sublunar realm and aeternia for the heavens. But eternity is not time, nor is time a portion of eternity — for there cannot be time without change, which requires a beginning and an end, and eternity has neither. Furthermore, motion is an attribute of changeable beings, while light is an attribute of fire. But one attribute cannot inhere in another, for then the second attribute must be an entity and we must not multiply entities without necessity. Thus, light cannot have motion.”

Hans ground his forearms together. “But light is an entity. It is a wave, like the ripples on the mill pond.”

Dietrich laughed at the Krenk’s witticism. “A ripple in the water is not an entity, but an attribute of water that results from a breeze, or a fish, or a stone thrown into it. What is the medium in which light ‘ripples’?”

Hans said, “There is no medium. Our philosophers have shown that…”

“Can there be a ripple without water?” Dietrich laughed again.

“Very well,” Hans said. “It is only like a ripple, but is composed of… very small bodies.”

“Corpuscles,” Dietrich supplied the word. “But if light were composed of corpuscles — a different proposition from being a ‘ripple in no medium’ — those bodies would impress themselves upon our sense of touch.”

Hans made the tossing gesture. “One cannot argue with such reasoning.” He rubbed his forearms together slowly but, as the rasps were muffled by the fur, he made no sound. “When the Heinzelmännchen oversets ‘motion’ or ‘spirit,’” he said at length, “the krenkish terms I hear may differ from the German terms you spoke. By me, the falling rock is in ‘motion,’ but not the burning log. When I say that by pressing a certain type on the talking head, I release spirit from the fires of the storage barrels and so animate the matter, I know what I have said, but not what you have heard. Have you finished your up-cleaning? Good. Let us to the fire in the parsonage. Here is by me too cold.”

They proceeded to the vestibule, and while Dietrich shrugged into his over-coat and pulled his collar close against the chill, the Krenk spoke further. “Yet you did speak a truth. Time is truly inseparable from motion — duration depends on the degree of motion — and time does have a beginning and an end. Our philosophers have concluded that time began when this world and the other world touched.” Hans clapped his two hands in illustration. “That was the beginning of everything. Some day, they will again clap, and all will begin anew.”

Dietrich nodded agreement. “Our world indeed began when touched by the other world; though to speak of ‘clapping hands’ is but a metaphor for what is pure spirit. But, to press a thing, some actor must press upon it, since no motion exists save by a mover. How might we press upon time?”

Hans opened the church door and crouched for the bounding leaps that would take him quickly through the cold to the parsonage. “Say rather,” he answered cryptically, “that time presses upon us.”

The customs of the manor required Herr Manfred to feast the villagers in the Hof during the holy days, and so he selected according to the Weistümer certain households from the manor rolls. By Oberhochwald, the customary number was twelve, to honor the Apostles. Those who, like Volkmar and Klaus, held several manses, sat beside the lord with their wives and ate and drank off the lord’s own dishes. Gärtners were invited also, though these brought their own cloth, cup, and trencher.

Gunther laid out a board of cheese, beer, swine-flesh with mustard, hazel-hen, sausage and puddings, and a stew of chicken. Manfred had told Baron Grosswald to provide the meal for his own folk from his own stores. Charitas went against krenkish inclinations, and most of what Gschert laid out were German foods, eked out with but a small portion of the more particular krenkish fare. Dietrich put the meager portions down to Grosswald’s innate selfishness.

During the banquet, Peter of Rheinhausen, Manfred’s minnesinger, sang from the Heroes’ Book, choosing the passage wherein King Dietrich’s band of knights attack the Rose Garden of the treacherous dwarf, Laurin, so to rescue the sister of Dietlieb, their comrade. One of Peter’s apprentices played a viol, while the other tapped a small tambour. After a time, Dietrich noticed that the krenkish guests clicked their mandibles in time to the lute. It was in such small ways that their essential humanity impressed itself upon him, and he offered contrition to God that he had ever thought them mere beasts.

Afterward, the peasants could take home what leftover food they could carry in their napkins. Langermann had brought an especially large cloth for this purpose. “The Herr’s table was set with the fruits of my labor,” the gärtner told him when he noticed Dietrich’s eye upon him, “so I am only taking back a little of what was once mine.” Nickel overstated the case, since he labored so little as possible himself, but Dietrich did not begrudge him his foresight.