Pilgrims of Promise: A Novel (The Journey of Souls Series) Read online

  The man shrugged. “I am unsure in this. I’ve a nephew who left on crusade last summer. He’s a good boy but has not yet returned. Methinks him not one to eat someone’s baby. And m’sister swears these stories are lies.”

  Pieter relaxed his grip. “And what of Dorothea?”

  “What of her?”

  “What says she of the crusaders?”

  The guard nodded. “She makes sure yer little penitent is well fed and clothed. She finds ways to lighten his penance. I’ve heard her reprimand the priest on more than one occasion.”

  Relieved, Pieter released a deep breath. “I should like to speak with her.”

  “Ja. Perhaps you may. She’s dining on a late supper, no doubt, or…” he leaned close to Pieter and whispered something the rest could not hear.

  Pieter’s brows raised and he cast a glance at Alwin. “Ja?”

  The guard nodded. “But tell no one. Now, seems all is in order here. If you’ve money, you can follow me to the lord’s inn.”

  Worried that the knights at Burgdorf would be hunting the killers of the Templars, Heinrich had been anxious. It would be good for them to get off the roadway. He looked nervously at the sword riding on Alwin’s hip. Should ne’er have kept it! he thought. What a fool I am.

  The pilgrims quietly walked through Olten’s dark streets and alleys until they were introduced to Lord Bernard’s innkeeper at the doorway of a comfortable two-story building. The house was dimly lit within by oil lanterns and a few thick candles. The innkeeper bade them enter as he greeted the weary pilgrims. “Good evening,” he murmured with a bow.

  Wil stepped forward. “We’ve need of shelter. We served your master well some months prior, and we hoped to meet him again.”

  “He’s in Bern.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “We’ve a few drunken guests, but I’ve room for some of you. For the lot it would cost you four pennies, and it buys you fresh bread and beer in the morning. The beast needs go to the stable along with four others.”

  Heinrich laughed and pointed to Otto. “He’s a good one for the stable!” He then whispered in the innkeeper’s ear, and the man nodded. “You, boy,” he said as he pointed to Wil. “You and your woman follow me. I’ve a room in the attic. ‘Tis a bit warm on summer nights, but it has a good straw mattress.”

  Blushing, Frieda lowered her head and hurried past the others to join Wil and the innkeeper climbing a flight of curling stairs.

  “Sleep well!” roared Otto. The pilgrims howled.

  In a few moments, the innkeeper returned to escort some others to a small closet whose floor was covered with a thick mound of fresh hay. “We’ve no mattress but soft hay. But he who sleeps here sleeps well.”

  Pieter was relieved. His bones ached from walking through the rain. He was thankful it was summer, to be sure, but he was nearly ecstatic to sleep under a good roof and atop a soft floor.

  “Now, who shall sleep with the beast?” chuckled the innkeeper.

  The children looked at one another warily.

  “Heinrich, you must guard the provisions,” Pieter finally blurted with a wide grin.

  “Ja, seems right enough,” he grumbled. He shuffled toward the door midst the guffaws of Otto.

  Alwin followed. “I’m well again, well enough to sleep with a beast, a miserable baker, and a stable full of Scheisse!”

  The pilgrims roared.

  “Well, who joins us?” sighed Heinrich. The words had barely left his lips when the man’s eye fell on Tomas. “You’re one of us, lad. You ought to come too.”

  Surprised at the dubious invitation, Tomas brightened. Being denied the inn was less important than belonging. “Ja. I’ll come.”

  Heinrich smiled. “Good. Then if it’s Weyer men for the stable, Otto, you’re the other!”

  Muttering under his breath, Otto followed the others to the stable that stood to one side of the inn. Unfortunately, the stable was crowded with two heavy-wheeled wagons and many horses. Grumbling, the guests clutched hands full of what clean straw they could find and piled it along one wall. “The straw is wet and packs hard! A pox on the others,” groused Otto.

  A shrill voice startled the four. “Mon Dieux!’

  “Eh?” Heinrich spun about.

  Alwin grabbed his sword. “Qui venir!”

  A trembling old man stared wide eyed at the four pilgrims now standing in a row before him. “Non, non! Je m’appelle Michel! Je…”

  “We do not speak your tongue!” snapped Heinrich. He stepped forward with his sword drawn.

  “Non, non! I… I am voyageur. I mean no … no evil.”

  Alwin stepped close to the man and held a lantern by his face. The Frenchman looked down at the Templar sword now pointed at his belly and nearly swooned. Something about the man’s sudden and inexplicable terror caught Alwin’s attention. “Cathar?” he asked.

  The old man closed his eyes and trembled. Alwin lowered his sword and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Non Templar,” he said kindly as he pointed to himself.

  Michel’s eyes opened in relief, and the pilgrims thought he might burst into tears. “Ah, mon Dieux!”

  “Sheath your sword, Heinrich,” said Alwin as he set his own aside. “He’s a Cathar.”

  “Cathar?” Heinrich was confused. “I thought he was French.”

  “The Cathari are heretics from the region of Provence and Languedoc. He would not think himself a Frenchman at all, and his language is not quite the same. I don’t know it very well.”

  Alwin turned to Michel and studied his clothing, then smiled at the egg clutched within one closed hand. “Credente?”

  The man hung his head and nodded.

  Alwin smiled. “Depuis Toulouse?”

  “Non, Avignonet.”

  The knight walked into the dark corners of the stable and chased away a clucking hen. He retrieved two eggs and handed them to the old fellow with a smile. At first, the man looked ashamed, but when he saw the twinkle in Alwin’s eyes, he grinned. Placing the eggs into his pockets, the Cathar cast a fleeting look at his horses and wagons, then hurried away.

  Chuckling, Alwin set the sword aside and then sat with his confused friends. “Gather close.”

  The four huddled atop the straw in the yellow light of a smoky lantern. Alwin stroked his beard and stared into the flame as he collected his thoughts. Heinrich thought the knight to have aged considerably since he had last seen him ride away from Stedingerland. That was six years prior, in the time when the monk had worn white robes and was known by another name. The baker remembered him as a sinewy young blond with the heart of a lion and the spirit of a saint. Still handsome and ever disposed toward compassion, Alwin had changed nonetheless. His hair and beard were now longer than the Templars allowed, and his dark eyes belied a deep sorrow. The man had become seasoned by a world of troubles, and the baker easily recognized the telltale marks of suffering. Heinrich waited quietly.

  “I should tell you my story,” began Alwin. He settled comfortably against a stout post. “I was proud to serve the order,” he said slowly. “I tried to serve my Lord with both sword and alms to the very limits of my strength. I was obedient to my masters in the preceptories, kept to my prayers, my reading of the Holy Scriptures, my endless fasts, and to the service of the Church. I honored my vow of chastity and only sought to offer kindness to the helpless and sharp steel to evil.

  “Yet, as God is my witness, I sit before you as a man confused.”

  A voice distracted the group. It was Pieter. “Ah, I’ve come with news. Dorothea… the lord’s daughter… has been told of our presence and bids us come to first meal before prime. She thinks it best we gather before the bells.”

  Slightly annoyed at the interruption, the four grumbled a bit. “Why before the bells?”

  Pieter shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Sir Alwin is telling us his story,” said Otto.

  “His story?” Pieter set himself atop a mound of hay and called Solomon to his s
ide. “Your pardon, Alwin. Please, continue.”

  The knight began again. “I kept the rules of my order and the rules of the Church, but I fear I violated the law of love.”

  “Order and love are not always friends,” muttered Pieter.

  The others stared at him.

  “Ah, pardon, Alwin. Please, go on.”

  “As I was saying, I served the order well and our Lord poorly.”

  Pieter spat.

  “Heinrich, when I left you in Stedingerland, I delivered the taxes to the preceptory in Cologne, where I remained until our Grand Master, William de Chartres, ordered a contingent of knights to England. I was sent as an escort along with the seneschal and three grand preceptors to the London Temple, where we met the horrid King John.

  “I remained in London for a year or so. It was a terrible time. The king is surrounded by fools, save one … a man named Sir William Marshal—a Christian knight of courtesy and honor for whom I have only respect. But I found the realm odd. It is filled with a great sense of liberty amongst the nobles, and even the middling freemen speak incessantly of their ancient rights. It seems they’ve come upon another way, yet their king is as ruthless a tyrant and as greedy a thief as I’ve e’er seen … save, perhaps, the pope.”

  “Well said! He—”

  Once again all eyes turned toward the priest, who sighed. “Pardon, again, Alwin. Please, say more.”

  “Ja. It was near Pentecost when I was ordered to France along with a small company of Templar knights and lesser brethren. We numbered about twenty-eight when we gathered in Paris. Our orders were to protect a papallegate soon to be sent to counsel an army arrayed against a growing heresy in the south of France.

  “We were told that the heretics teach that two powers control all things: Jehovah, the benevolent Lord of light, rules the realm of the spirit; while the equally empowered lord of the material world, Lucifer, rules things temporal, including the flesh in which men’s spirits are imprisoned. They preach that Christ was spirit only; He had no physical, earthly body, so our Holy Mother had no pain in childbirth. He was sent by Jehovah so that men might be liberated from all things temporal.

  “They deny the sacraments, the Holy Trinity, the resurrection, prayer, and the Holy Church. They are forbidden to eat eggs or meat of any kind. To them sexual union is the greatest sin, for it perpetuates the world of the flesh by causing birth. They have their own bishops and deacons, and they lay hands on one another to pass on spiritual power. Their elite live plain lives, utterly committed to the laws of their creed. They are called the perfecti. The followers are called the crecientes. I suppose they do their best, but they are weaker men who hope to enter a higher state on their deathbeds.”

  Pieter rose angrily. “Bondage mongers! They abuse the fools that follow them. They are no better than the Church they oppose!”

  “Are you finished?” Heinrich groused.

  Pieter grumbled, then sat down once more. “Aye. Pardon, Alwin. Please, go on.”

  Alwin walked toward the provisions piled near Paulus and withdrew the Templar sword. “Father Pieter, it is teaching such as yours that defeats the snares of heretics, not this.” He drove the sword into the earth at the center of the circle. Sitting, he continued. “The pope insisted that King Philip of France destroy the Cathari and eliminate their creed by violence. The king, however, was more concerned with the English. Unfortunately, a papal legate, one Pierre de Castelnau, was murdered in Provence. We were then ordered to prepare a holy war against the heretics, that ‘sinister race of Languedoc,’ and soon the pope issued his bull that granted all knights crusader status. This meant that in death our souls would fly to heaven and that in life we’d be offered the lands of the slain heretics. So you might imagine how quickly the army filled with landless knights feigning piety!

  “I was told we numbered nearly fifty thousand men-at-arms. We followed the Rhône toward Provence, where we joined a papal legate named Arnaud-Amaury. He was to act as the spiritual adviser to the crusade and was later elected archbishop of the conquered territory.

  “We learned that even the local Catholic lords were preparing to resist us. Our army ransacked countless villages on our way to Béziers, then destroyed a pathetic sortie sent from that woeful town. It was there that my faith was crushed. We seized the town with ease, of course, but then I hid in a dark corner as our army slew nearly twenty thousand men, women, and children—Cathar and Catholic alike. In the middle of the slaughter, my preceptor challenged the papal legate. We ought spare the Catholics!’ he cried. To which Arnaud-Amaury replied, ‘Kill them all; God will find His own!’” Alwin shuddered and fell silent.

  The listeners shifted uneasily, looking at one another with troubled faces. Alwin proceeded to tell more of the unspeakable cruelties inflicted upon the terrified citizens of Béziers in such descriptive language as might give nightmares to the most hardened of hearts. He went on to speak of other battles: the siege of Carcassonne and the death of thousands to disease, hunger, and thirst; the mutilation of prisoners in Bram; and of stake burnings in Minerve and Lavour.

  “Then Montfort ordered us to attack small fortresses and towns all around Toulouse. I’d had enough. It made me vomit to think of what we were doing in the name of God. I wanted to slay the pope! I could barely pray, I ate during fasts, and I refused to read the psalms at chapter. No, the confusion of it was more than I could bear.

  “Then, about four months ago, I was sent with two brethren and a company of German knights to a small village near Albi. We were to demand the lord release all known Cathari to our custody for burning. When we arrived—and we numbered about two score—we were met with a pitiful group of armed Catholic farmers wishing to defend their neighbors and their own homes. I was astonished. In their midst was a brave priest. I remember his final words. The conscience is reached by love!’ he cried. I suppose he would have said more, but an arrow was shot through his head, and we charged the brave defenders.

  “As for me, I lowered my sword in tears and could not swing it at any of the poor wretches. Instead, when I saw a brother Templar dismount and run toward a fleeing old farmer, I filled with rage and charged at him on my stallion. I can still see the astonishment on his face as I cried out and trampled him to death. I then turned and slew a French knight, then a German. Confused, others reined their horses and stared at me. My preceptor stood in his stirrups in utter disbelief. It was in that moment that I tore my robe away and cast it down.

  “‘Brother Blasius!’ he cried. I said nothing but wheeled my mount hard around and fled. With no money and nothing to eat, I begged my way slowly east over the weeks that followed. Finally, I came upon a band of knights in Sion who were recently hired by a lord in the service of Otto. With no other choices, I fought with them until the day you found me.”

  Alwin’s eyes were swollen, and he looked away from his companions in shame. He walked over to the provisions to draw a long drink of ale. Heinrich stood and followed him, then laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. “My friend, we are never too far gone for grace to find us, nor too close for us to need it. Do not be so proud as to carry shame. There is another way.”

  Alwin turned. “Then you must teach me, old friend, for I am lost.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  TROUBLE IN OLTEN

  Frieda and Wil descended from their room before the bells of prime rang over Olten. Smiling, the pair leaned into one another as lovers do, and despite the catcalls of their teasing fellows, they kissed one last time before the day’s beginning.

  “We’re to meet with Lady Dorothea!” exclaimed Maria. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. “She was so pretty.”

  “And I am sure she’ll remember you,” said Frieda.

  “Hurry, then,” called Heinrich from the door. “We’re to be there before the bells.”

  The company walked briskly through Olten’s waking streets. They were narrow and cramped by tight rows of one-and two-story shops and dwellings. Shutters were opened ov
er window boxes of early summer flowers. The dirt streets were heavier with manure than what was common, but the ruts that Pieter remembered had been filled.

  The eleven pilgrims followed the winding streets according to instructions offered by the innkeeper. They turned at the cutler’s guild and hurried on, passing the town fishpond and the lush common gardens surrounding it. Finally, they rounded one last corner and approached the three-storied timber-and-mortar home of Lord Bernard.

  Two guards gave them entrance, and they were quickly ushered by a servant to the lord’s firelit hall, where Dorothea rose to meet them. “Ah, wunderbar! It is so wonderful to see you again!” The graceful fair-haired woman brushed past her attendant and took each by the hand in turn. “Maria! Yes, I remember you. Your friend Friederich talks of you all the time … he talks of all of you!”

  Pieter stepped forward with a wide one-tooth grin.

  “And Father Pieter! You rascal! The priest says you are a sorcerer, you know. He says no mere man could fix a tooth as you did.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  Embarrassed, Pieter blushed like a schoolboy, then introduced Alwin as a landless knight and old friend of Heinrich.

  The woman looked at him and admired his handsome form. Her eyes fell to his vacant hip. “A knight with no sword?”

  Alwin’s hand flew to his side. “Well… I left it in the stable, m’lady. I … I thought it not proper to bring it to your house.”

  Dorothea smiled. “I see. Well, now, all of you, welcome. Please, be seated at my table. The ushers shall take you to your seats. I am sorry for the early rising, but I’m to begin a journey to St. Gall before terce.”

  Pieter and Wil stepped past several hounds and were positioned on either side of the lady, who sat at the end of her trestle table. From there, the pilgrims were placed in order of acquaintance, leaving Alwin and the minstrel on opposite sides at the far end. With all things proper, Pieter was asked to say a blessing and Benedetto to sing a song. Then, at long last, the lord’s baker delivered a silver tray heavy with wheat loaves and pretzels. To this, the cook added two trays of cheese and a clay bowl of cherry preserves. A wooden goblet was set by each guest and filled with red wine.