Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade (15 page)

Wil looked hopefully toward the dark forest with an eye for Pieter. He had become quickly dependant on this strange, old man. But he had no sooner surrendered to the prospect of the priest’s disappearance when he heard the friendly bark of Solomon and a few discordant melodies drifting toward him from the darkness. He released a sigh.

Pieter emerged into the pungent, welcoming smells of burning wood and roasting fish. He emptied his sack carefully, spilling a few black crusts, half an onion, two leeks, a handful of barley, some old oats, and a sound, though badly dented, tin pot. The children were reasonably impressed, and, before long, a meager, though delicious vegetable pottage was boiling over a crackling fire.

After enjoying their good meal, the children snuggled peacefully together atop their grassy beds oblivious to the perils poised before them. And soon each brave crusader was fast asleep, each stomach adequately filled with the pleasure of a satisfying portion, and each heart wrapped tightly in the secure love of Pieter the Broken.

Chapter 7

PESTILENCE AND DEATH

T
he next morning’s sun beamed hope into the campsite as the faithful cheerfully roused themselves to their given tasks. Pieter welcomed daybreak on his knees and stretched his arms over his flock, “
Gratia, gratia Dei tibi.
…” Contented by his lauds the old man pulled himself to his feet to join the assembling children.

Wil preferred to place Pieter just behind himself, keeping the wise counselor within a whisper or a glance. Karl was always close to the old man’s heels and was trailed by Maria. The others gathered in a various order that was determined each new day by the feuds or friendships developed around the prior night’s camp. Wil thought it wise to use Solomon as a shepherd’s dog and suggested Pieter send him periodically to circle the pilgrims in order to keep the strays tight to the group. The priest found the idea agreeable and set the dog to the rear of the column as Wil counted heads. Content that all was in proper order, the young commander then ordered his fresh-faced soldiers southward.

The band tramped along in a complacent quiet and grumbled little of the hunger beginning to gnaw at them once again. Each eye, however, scoured the roadway for any scrap of fallen food that may have escaped the truant eye of a passing wagoner. Pieter, growing a bit bored and wanting to distract his own mind from his hollow belly, called over his shoulder to Karl. “So, lad, you fancy a proper riddle, do you?”

Karl’s face lit and his lips parted into an impish grin.

“Ah, then, venture this: A magpie fluttered into a nobleman’s manor house to sip of some wine from the very bottom of a fine cup. The nobleman’s cup, however, was rather tall, the sort that Frenchmen boast, and the poor magpie failed to reach the wine. Yet, after reasonable contemplation, the clever bird was delighting in it. How would the magpie have accomplished such a thing?”

Karl’s certain grin turned immediately to a confounded pucker. He scratched his head. “I … I must think on this some, Pieter. But I vow to answer it in short!”

The lad was soon riveted in thought and paid scant attention to anything other than its answer until the column rounded a corner and came upon two sobbing children hobbling toward them from behind a thick shrubbery.

Wil halted his queue. “Yes, and who comes?”

“We’re lost,” a boy answered nervously as he approached the stern commander. He wrung his hands and his pleading eyes cast about the faces now encircling him. “And m’sister turned on her ankle and cannot walk very fast.”

Wil grunted and stepped past the boy. “You, girl, let me see this leg of yours.” He took the trembling girl’s ankle gently in his hands and ran his nimble fingers over the swelling. Satisfied that no bones were broken, he turned toward her brother.

Pieter’s blue eyes twinkled and he moved toward the newcomers with a smile and a tender tone. “Ah, what have we here? More lambs for our flock, I presume?”

Before the man could utter another word, Wil grasped him by the sleeve. “How can we feed more?” he groused. “We must stop increasing. No more of this.” He tipped his head toward the two and pressed the old man. “Look there, her ankle is badly swelled and she cannot walk without help. He looks to have fever. Nay, we’ll add no more.”

Pieter answered gently, “To you, my brave friend, these little ones are something of a curse, another burden to be stacked upon your crowded shoulders. Yet, to them you are an answer to a prayer, a gift from the angels. Which is correct?”

Wil’s lips worked to form an answer but none would come, and he cast his tired eyes to the ground. Pieter placed both his steady hands on the boy’s shoulders and squeezed confidence into the lad’s frame. He turned to the two. “Ah, dear children,” Pieter said, “by what names are you known?”

The tense, though hopeful young boy stepped forward and choked, “I am Johann Lukas and this be my sister, Maria Marta.”

“Yes, good names indeed. With Wil’s permission, however, we’ll call you by Lukas and Marta for it seems we’ve an abundance of Johanns and Marias as it is.” Pieter put his arm around Lukas. “Are we agreed?”

“Oh,
ja … ja,”
answered the relieved boy as he pulled his fingers through his brown curls. “And we’ll vex none … and I think m’sister’s ankle to be a bit better … and …”

“Wilkum, ja,”
interrupted Karl. “So Pieter, I’ve the answer to your riddle….”

“Hold, Karl,” laughed Pieter. “Hold for a moment. Y’must make known to our new comrades, Lukas and Marta.”

Karl gave the pair a quick nod. “But I’ve your answer: The magpie dropped gravel in the cup to raise the wine.”

Pieter clapped his hands and rubbed the boy’s red head. “Well done, well done indeed.”

“And now I have one for you, Pieter.”

Pieter smiled and sat down by Marta’s side. He placed his palms flat behind him on the dirt and tilted his old head back to soak in every word the boy was about to offer.

“The forest spirits cast a woman with a spell. She could meet her husband only under cover of night, but by lauds she changed to a rose planted with three other roses in a pot by the bedroom window. If her husband could pluck her bloom she’d be free, but should he fail, she’d die.

“By each day’s prime the husband came to the pot and looked carefully at the beautiful roses. Each was so very much alike he bedded each night uncertain which could possibly be his wife. At last, one dawn he bounded from his bed and ran to the pot and plucked a bloom and freed his wife of the spell. How knew he which to choose?”

Pieter set a bony forefinger to his pursed lips. “My, my, Karl, ’tis a good one. It shall take some time to unravel it.”

The children marched on under the hot July sun eating bits and portions of sundry castoffs from passing travelers or of the good fortunes of the net in Pieter’s pocket. The river served them well as their daily source of water for boiling gruel or bathing, and God was praised for the healing of Marta’s ankle, Lukas’s fever, and the varied maladies plaguing little Lothar. The group seemed to be constantly singing and whistling, shrieking and giggling, which often embarrassed their commander who thought such behavior most unnatural for warriors of the faith!

The fields of rye and barley bordering the roadway were wilted but stubbornly maturing as the coming harvest drew closer. The hay had long since been cut and sheaved, and white sheep now dotted the sickled meadows. Early fruits were beginning to appear within walled orchards, enticing the bolder boys to pluck an occasional young apple or pear to soften in the gruel.

The increasing fatigue of the journey had limited conversation, but a bond of earnest comradeship had begun to bind the children fast to one another. Pieter and Karl seemed to grow closer with every step along the way, each teasing the other with a short riddle or quick-spun sally. But it was Maria who had captured the old man’s heart more than all the rest. This dear
Mädel
loved Pieter so very much and he, her. She shared the old man’s lap with Solomon as evenings’ fires lulled them both to deep sleep. It was about those same campfires that Pieter spun the tales of his youth to the speechless children circling the embers on hard-pressed elbows.

“Ach, ja.
The furious battle of Tortona,” he blustered one starry night. “Yes, ’tis true, m’lads and ladies, I did war there as a footman.” Pieter’s eyes widened and burned like the fire that roared at his feet. He stood wide-legged, his hands clutching his old crook which he now wielded over the heads of his audience like a mighty mace. “The good knights of Friederich the Fat were harried and bloodied, driven into a tight knot of leather and steel at the center of the Lombardian snare.

“Then, from within our retreating ranks, roared a giant of a man. A simple footman but unlike any I had ever met. To this very day I know not whence he came, nor whether his breast bore the heart of a lion … or a devil. He stood two heads above every man among us and when he turned his mace upon the foe …”

The children sat still as rabbits in the eye of a fox as Pieter wove them a rich tapestry for their dreams. He loomed them images of heavy-armored cavalry thundering o’er blood-stained fields and brave knights crashing in thunderous collisions of horseflesh and steel. Then, breathless and flushed, he proclaimed the glorious victory and whispered in hushed tones of the valiant footman who saved his lord’s mighty army. The cheering crusaders stood to their feet and clapped.

But Pieter had merely paused to swallow a hearty gulp of begged mead and soon was at the easy task of drawing giggles and guffaws from the farthest stretch of firelight. He squatted by the snapping logs and told of Lord Friederich’s huge, jiggling belly which “chilled the resolve of many a sturdy horse in waiting.” He laughed and laughed and further revealed the agitations and tempers of Sir Balder the Bold whose nose always offered a good dripping “till his helmet was clasped fast. And then, good children, the oaths which bellowed from behind that bound face blushed even the rugged faces of the crudest knights in earshot!”

The girls soon begged for fancied tales of life in the court of Pieter’s father, the Duke Otto, who, it was told, bellowed and barked so as to “weaken the knees of a hardened Templar” while nimbly picking pennyroyal and primrose for his beloved wife. They smiled dreamy smiles as the old priest spoke of the brocade silk dress his gentle mother wore, of her fine headdress of red satin and yellow silk from Syria, and of her silver necklaces from Greece and Persia.

Pieter’s eyes closed and he wet his dry lips as he recalled the bounty of feasts past—of pheasant and venison, of fine roasted boar and duck buried in honey-sauced cherries.
Ah,
he thought,
even yet do I smell the crackling spit and the sweet glaze.
The children stirred politely and their entranced elder was called to his present company. “Ah, quite … aye, aye, to other matters.”

Pieter spoke freely and with passion of his days as a manorial priest and the years as a monk cloistered deep within the dark, damp walls of his Carthusian abbey. The children listened intently of his final exile to a harsh Cistercian order in Silesia, where his superiors believed depravation and hard work would quench the yearnings of his spirit. “It was there,” Pieter reflected soberly, “while clearing timber from endless forests and trenching those miserable marshes that I learned to know the God of creation. ‘Twas there my ears first cocked to the soft steps of a wolf in a winter’s snow, and my nostrils twitched to the smell of the coming of rain on a summer’s night. It was there that I began to grasp the very essence of the
kosmos,
for in that wilderness my eyes opened to our world’s depravity, its dignity, and the ever-present hand that bears it firmly in its flux.

“My little ones, listen to my words: I beg you to understand so that you can believe. God has blessed you each with a sound mind, and the clues to understanding Him lie all about. It is for you to gather them to yourselves, arrange their proper order, and someday you shall surely seize the mystery of the mind of Almighty God.”

Pieter’s words gained force as he spoke with grave resolution. “If only we could fairly reason what lies all about us. We must needs conquer the confusion that blinds the eye and disturbs the mind. If we understand we can believe. I so swear.”

Karl was inspired and rose to speak. “It is like a great riddle, is it not, Pieter? ’Tis like to a riddle where the answer is just beyond the knowing. But when we keep our mind to it, we do find the answer … and are the better for it.”