Manfred, sitting in his curule chair at his desk, curled his fingers under his chin. “So. How long is your enemy list?”

“Mine Herr, I did not believe I had any.”

Manfred nodded toward the indictment. “You have at least two. By Catherine’s wheel, you are naïve for a priest. I can name a dozen here in the village.”

Dietrich thought irresistibly of those who had objected to Hans’ baptism, who feared the Krenken beyond reason. The punishments for false witness were severe. A father who had accused his son of heresy, for spite over the lad’s disobedience, had been placed in the stocks, where he had died. Dietrich went to the slit window and sucked in the evening air. Firelight glowed in cottage windows in the valley below. The forest was a rustling black under a twinkling sky.

How could he name her, and deliver her to such a fate?

6. Now: Tom

Tom and Judy met at the Pigeon Hole to discuss her latest findings over a couple of cheesesteak hoagies. Searching for Pastor Dietrich, Judy’s worm had turned up a ton of klimbim. “Do you know how many medieval Germans have been named Dietrich?” She rolled her eyes up to heaven, but secretly she knew how much work one eureka took. The journey of a thousand miles really does begin with a single step; it just doesn’t end there. “Wrong century; wrong kingdom. Saxony, Würtemburg, Franconia… A ‘Dietrich’ in Cologne, even a ‘Dietrich’ in Paris. Those, I could eliminate. The tough ones had no particular year or place associated with them. Those I had to read them one by one. And this one?” She waved the printout in the air. “The idiots didn’t put ‘Oberhochwald’ in their index. Otherwise, it would have popped out long ago.” She bit her hoagie savagely. “Jerks,” she muttered.

This was a book excerpt. During the 1970’s, an enterprising group of liberals had published a book called Tolerance Through the Ages, whose contents were intended to show enlightened attitudes in many times and places. Along with Martin Luther King’s I have a dream… speech and Roger Williams’ The Bloody Tenet was a letter from Pastor Dietrich to his bishop.

To the Rt. Rev. Wilhelm Jarlsberg, Archdeacon of Frieburg in the Breisgau

I beseech your good offices to present with my humble prayers this apologia to his grace, Berthold II, Bishop of Strassburg.

I have remained meekly silent while my detractors, hoping to turn your heart against me, have laid a charge against me with the tribunal of the Holy Office. Reason and truth will prevail, I thought. Yet, this latest incident regarding the flagellants in Strassburg causes me to wonder whether reason be yet highly regarded in Christendom.

My accusers have told you that we in Oberhochwald have welcomed demons into our homes. By your most gracious leave, I respond in this manner.

Question. Whether Pastor Dietrich of Oberhochwald has treated with demons and sorcerors and foully abused the blest sacrament of baptism under vehement suspicion of heresy.

Objection 1. It would seem that I have treated with demons because my guests have employed various occult devices and practice arts unknown to Christian men.

Objection 2. It would seem that I have treated with demons because my guests are said to fly by supernatural means. And such flight is said to be like that of the witches who meet on the mountain called the Kandel.

Objection 3. It would seem that I have treated with demons because my guests are peculiar in their appearance.

On the contrary, it is written that Christ died to save all men. Baptism cannot therefore be withheld from willing converts, but only by force or by impairment of the will is the grace of the sacrament corrupted. Further, Canon Episcopi clearly states that witchcraft, albeit a civil crime, is no heresy. Thus the request of my accusers is improper in both theology and law.

Reply to Objection 1. Worldly things are either natural or unnatural. But a thing is termed unnatural because it lies outside nature’s usual course, not because it invokes the supernatural. So, a stone thrown upward is said to exhibit unnatural motion, for it would never exhibit such motion by its own nature. Now artificial things include not only constraints of nature of this kind, but also mechanical contrivances such as clocks or eyeglasses. So an herb woman employing some hidden quality of a plant is said to practice magic, because the true essence has not yet been uncovered, and only the efficacy is known. But “hidden” does not mean forever unknown, for these essences, being real, are discoverable, and it would be vain for nature to have a property potentially knowable that cannot be actually known, and as it becomes more generally known to scholars, it ceases to be occulted. For example, we read now God’s Word through the medium of wonderful eye glasses. Though these be but mechanical contrivances, many of the simple folk do mistrust them. My guests employ devices like those described by Roger Bacon, which, while their essences remain occult, are generally regarded as things of this world.

Reply to Objection 2. Canon Episcopi declares that witches do not fly to their Sabbats, save in dreams induced by belladonna and other noxious herbs, and that to believe otherwise is sinful. Therefore, my accusers err when they claim that my guests fly by supernatural means. Flying, should it be possible, will be accomplished either through God’s Will or through the skills of clever artisans.

Reply to Objection 3. Demons cannot abide the touch of Holy Water. Yet, the water of baptism caused them no discomfort, in particular he who took the Christian name Johannes. Therefore, he is no demon.

Thus do I refute my accusers. “Whatsoever ye do to the least of My children, ye do unto Me.” I have aided wanderers lost and hungry, some grievously hurt, when they appeared here this summer past. Granted, Fra Joachim finds them ugly and names them demons, despite their evident mortal ills, but mortal they are. They fare from a far land, and folk there have naturally a different form; but if Pope Clement can by his marvelously rational bull open his palace at Avignon to the Jews, then surely a poor parish priest may shelter helpless wayfarers, no matter the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes.

Christ with us this Year of Grace 1348. Given by my own hand at Oberhochwald in the Margravate of Baden, on the Commemoration of Gregory Nazianzen.

Dietrich

“Quite a remarkable man,” said Tom, folding the printout.

“Yes,” said Judy quietly. “I should have liked to have known him. My parents were also ‘helpless wayfarers.’ They lived in a boat on the water for three years before their ‘Pastor Dietrich’ found them a home.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and I was born here. The American story.

He tapped the pages with his fingernail. “This brother Joachim, on the other hand, sounds like a bigot, denouncing Dietrich to the Inquisition like that and calling the people ‘demons.’”

“Dietrich mightn’t have known who his accusers were.”

“Anonymous denunciation? Sounds like the Inquisition.”

“Well…”

Tom cocked his head. “What?”

“In the beginning, a lot of accusers wound up dead — killed by the heretics — so they were promised anonymity, and severe penalties were imposed for false accusations.”

He blinked. “The Inquisition had rules?”