Quest of Hope: A Novel Read online

  The prior appeared and interrupted the porter with his greeting. “Thanks be to God.”

  Egidius bowed to his superior. “Prior Paulus, we’ve a visiting brother with a letter from Mainz and a woman with some business as well.”

  Emma bowed. “The paper is about my business. This wanderer is but my poor escort, assigned to me by a well-meaning clerk.”

  Prior Paulus looked at the woman and her child and took the string-tied scroll from Martin’s hand. He cracked open the wax seal and unrolled it. It contained a message from the archbishop regarding the year’s plantings, taxes owed to Lord Hugo the protector, and the apportionment of the glebe harvest to the priests of the villages. He read further to find a list of repairs, tithes, dues, and hospitalities that the abbey might expect in the coming year. Toward the bottom a reference was made to the threats of a western lord and the likely gathering of Knights Templar to oppose him. At the very end was a brief statement regarding Emma: “Without known reason I am asked by your protector, Lord Hugo of Runkel, to provide this whore and her ill-formed bastard a shelter fit a woman of virtuous repute. She seems of high birth and I suspect her to be a despoiled nun. Receive her, but her cursed son is not to be an oblate; he is to suckle at the sinner’s breast and bear the weight of his mother’s scourge without benefit of alms.”

  Paulus rolled the yellowed scroll and turned to Martin. “Brother, I see nothing of regard to you.”

  Brother Martin folded his hands and kneeled. “When did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and givest you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in?”

  Paulus was not impressed. “Gyrovoagi,” he muttered. Yet charity was a virtue he had vowed and it could not be ignored. “Brother, we may either feed you and send you on your way, or offer you our fellowship as brethren. Your wish?”

  “I wish to join you as your brother.”

  Paulus’s face darkened. “I see. Then you must abide the difficult rules of joining our community. In keeping with the Rules of St. Benedict, you must remain outside of this gate for five days. At the ringing of each bell you shall entreat the porter for entry. You, Brother Egidius, must refuse him at each request.”

  “Aye. ‘I rejoice in following thy statutes,’” the porter smirked.

  “Then at compline of the fifth day you shall be allowed in, and you shall be brought to a novice’s cell as a postulant, and there you shall dwell for one year. After this time has passed, you shall stand before the community in the oratory and take a vow of stability promising us your faithful presence until the Lord takes your soul. You shall vow obedience to our rule and prostrate yourself to each brother in turn. Then, Brother Martin, perhaps we may serve one another.”

  Martin said nothing but left his knees and bowed. Prior Paulus turned to Emma and her son. “My child. Come, enter in and let us show you to your quarters until we’ve settled you in one of our villages.”

  “Grace to you, Prior Paulus,” she answered. “And thanks be to God. But as you consider our prospect, might I humbly ask to be housed near water? ‘Tis somewhat soothing by its sound and—”

  “Considering your sins, methinks you to have little to say in this matter!” scolded Paulus. He paused, then softened his voice. “We’ve the village of Villmar, here, by the Lahn River, and we own some four villages by millstreams.” He looked at Ingelbert and his eyes saddened. “You have naught to fear, daughter. Your sins are at your breast each day; you have no need of an increase in your misery.” The prior paused for a moment. “I believe our village of Weyer to be a good place for you. It has a good stream, thick woods, Volk with no thought to idle time. Ja, Weyer shall be your home.”

  And so it was by the late days of November in the year of our Lord 1174, Emma of Quedlinburg became Emma of Weyer. She was housed in a hastily repaired cottage at the village edge and—to the young woman’s great joy—by the pleasant waters of the Laubusbach.

  Spring came early in the year 1175 and brought life and new hope to the village. Arnold and his wife welcomed their firstborn, Richard, on the fourteenth day of March. By April, Kurt and Berta were busy planning the season’s labors. Berta was large and cumbersome, her second child expected to be born in June. Since Easter would be late she counted the days and prayed the child might be born on Pentecost. Heinrich’s birth had missed the Epiphany by nearly a fortnight, and Berta still worried that good fortune was forever denied the child.

  Meanwhile, Kurt had added another member to the household. Besides sheltering his sister, he rented space on the straw-strewn floor of the common room to a young man named Herwin, a distant cousin on Berta’s side. Herwin earned only a few pennies a week as the thatcher’s helper, so he offered Kurt a little cash as well as labor in Kurt’s fields. Herwin was sixteen and bright, gentle, and rather timid, given more to dreams than to the coarse ways of the sons of Jost. But Kurt thought him trustworthy and hardworking; virtues his father had taught him to honor.

  Days passed quickly and without excitement until Kurt announced the betrothal of Sieghild. After shocking the girl with the unexpected news he gave her instructions. “Sieghild, you are to ride with Arnold on the morn to the Lahn. He’s to deliver a cart to Lord Hugo’s clerk in Runkel, then take you to meet your betrothed and his father by midday’s meal.”

  Sieghild trembled. Kurt had negotiated with the father of a ploughman who lived in a border settlement along the Lahn River near Lord Hugo’s castle. Kurt had met the young man’s father while working with the carpenters. Sieghild did her best to hold back her tears, but her face revealed her fear.

  Kurt looked at this sister with compassion but without mercy. “You shan’t be a spinster under my roof. You’d be sixteen, girl. ‘Tis time for you to marry. I was able to bargain nearly a shilling for your dowry. Father told me you would not be easy to barter and I think I’ve done well.”

  At that moment Herwin came through the door, his woollens covered with thatch from a hard day’s work atop the roofs of Oberbrechen. The look on Sieghild’s tortured face stopped him in his tracks. “Sieghild?”

  “Sieghild is to meet with her family-to-be on the morrow. The wedding’s in June ‘fore Midsummer’s and she has yet much to accomplish,” answered Kurt.

  The next morning Sieghild trudged slowly to Baldric’s hovel. Though Jost had passed his land to Kurt, he had given Baldric his hut and its gardens, and had given Arnold two shillings of pennies. Sieghild hesitated to enter. She paused for a long moment and finally took a deep breath and called for Arnold. Within the hour she was bouncing through the byways of Weyer.

  Somewhere on the road to Runkel five men charged from the wood and intercepted Arnold’s cart. “Ha!” boomed one as he grabbed the horse’s bridle. “You’d be comin’ with us, son of Jost!”

  Cursing, Arnold stood on his wagon and snapped his whip at the man. “Off with you! Get off, now!” He swung his whip over and over again, drawing blood and oaths. More hands grasped at the panicked beast and at Arnold and his shrieking sister.

  Arnold quickly reached under his seat and yanked out a stout stick with a rock lashed to one end. He roared and flung his weapon in all directions, pounding at the heads and shoulders of the gang of men now clambering into his cart. It wasn’t long, however, before Arnold was knocked to the ground where four of the rogues kicked him and beat him furiously until he went limp in the dust.

  Meanwhile, a fifth man held Sieghild by her hair as his fellows rummaged through the cart. Like ignorant apes at the fairs of Champagne, they poked and sniffed a satchel of spices destined for Lord Hugo’s kitchen and some herbs intended for his physician. One squeezed warm cider from a wineskin into Arnold’s face. “Look at me, son of Jost! You and your kin needs pay for yer sins.”

  “Aye, you’d all be in needs of a lesson, methinks,” snarled another.

  Arnold struggled to open his blood-matted eyes. He peered through a red haze at the filth before him. Toothless, and smelling worse than most peasants before their spri
ng baths, they reeked of garlic and field scallions; their leggings were threadbare and crusted by years of neglect.

  “Rot in hell,” muttered Arnold.

  With that, poor Sieghild was thrown to the ground. Arnold struggled to his feet, only to be hammered in the belly. He collapsed, gasping and cursing. The writhing girl’s gown and under-gown were yanked from her shins and bunched above her hips. Sieghild’s face was pummelled mercilessly by heavy fists while her wrists and ankles were pinned tightly to the ground.

  It was not long before her screams and pleadings faded into wounded whimpers as one by one each attacker took a turn. At long last the five stood shoulder to shoulder spitting upon both Arnold and poor Sieghild. They laughed and mocked the girl, adding vulgarities to their blasphemy, then crowded into Arnold’s cart. With a slap of the whip they disappeared into the darkening wood.

  Arnold groaned and covered his trembling sister. Stunned and ashamed, Sieghild stared vacantly from behind haunted eyes, then turned her face away.

  The next day, little Heinrich awakened just before dawn. He cried for his mother and, while Berta attended his needs, Kurt stood in his doorway, anxious and suddenly filled with dread. Sieghild had not yet returned from her journey, and the man sensed something was wrong. He stepped lightly past his trestle table and raised the hardwood latch of his door. The village was dark and smoky, the air heavy and clinging. He hurried to Baldric’s hoping for news, but, having none, he could do little else but report to his duties with the carpenters working in the nearby village of Oberbrechen.

  By the bells of nones, Kurt returned to Weyer and inquired again, only to learn nothing. Gravely concerned, he reluctantly marched to his fields that lay just north of the village. He arrived and stared mutely at the large stones that marked his strips. With a deep breath Kurt forced his attention to the fertile ground and calculated his hopes for the growing season ahead. Of his half-hide, half were in fallow and the rest would yield barely enough for a profit. He needed to keep about one third of the harvest for the next planting’s seed, another third for taxes, and only the last third would be his own. That final third needed to feed his family and leave enough to be sold for profit.

  Herwin, Kurt’s tenant, was clever and insisted that more manure would increase the yield. Unfortunately, Kurt owned no sheep or cows and would have to purchase it. Kurt preferred to argue, “the best fertilizer is the farmer’s foot.” He knew his land, he said, and somehow that would have to be good enough.

  For the remainder of the day he labored behind his rented oxen, but Kurt’s thoughts were never far from Sieghild. Twilight finally urged him to follow other weary silhouettes toward the village. He was hungry and his legs ached. His mind pictured Berta’s bubbling mush and Heinrich’s laughing face.

  Kurt made his way to Baldric’s hut once more—only now he arrived to find a scene of horror. Baldric’s face was purpled in a rage that Kurt had never seen. Arnold’s wife was holding Sieghild dutifully and turned cold eyes toward Kurt. “Your brother’s half-dead from a Gunnar beating and this one’s been used—by more than one—and she’s in need of a midwife.”

  Kurt paled. A shiver chilled his back and anger coursed through his body. He looked at Sieghild with a devastating pity. He reached for her but she pulled away and turned her face in shame.

  Baldric roared, “By God, Jesus, by Odin and thunder; by the wind I do swear this night that blood will spill!”

  Kurt nodded and turned toward Arnold who was slouched and unattended in a corner. The badly beaten young man looked up from swollen eyes. His nose was broken and he was bent in two with pain.

  “I… I am sorry, brother,” Arnold wheezed and coughed. “There was five, methinks. I—”

  “Hush, Arnold,” snapped Kurt. “There’d be no shame for you in this.”

  Baldric crouched by his younger brother and Arnold grabbed his shoulder. “Vow this: vow you’d not be seeking Gunnar kin without me. I… I needs time for strength, but by God, I must make them pay with m’own hand.”

  Baldric hesitated. He wanted to strike that very night. He stood and paced the room like a wounded bear. His narrow eyes flickered and flamed. With a howl and an anguished cry he smashed a stool with the edge of his huge fist. He hesitated, then relented. “Aye, brother, I so vow.”

  The next morning Berta reluctantly held a cup of the midwife’s infusion to Sieghild’s lips while her sisters-in-law stood grimly in the corner. Berta was told the drink might keep God’s judgment from the girl’s womb by sparing her the consequence of her attackers. “A blend of secret herbs and steeped in water hexed years ago by a passing Syrian,” the midwife said.

  Berta was not unkind, nor without compassion, but she wanted no part of this uncleanness. She had worked too hard at her own perfection to be soiled by this woman’s indignity. Her pity was blended with disgust. “Touched and handled by so many,” she whined. “Methinks some spirit within her must have drawn them … talk’s always been of such.”

  Hildrun nodded. “Despoiled, I say, and none will want her now. What Christian man would?”

  Gisela agreed. “I’ve always thought her to have demons hovering about.”

  Poor Sieghild had said not one word since the attack and had done little more than stare and groan in pain. Though mute, she was not deaf, however, and had the other women bothered to look, they would have surely seen the unspoken anguish flooding the young woman’s eyes. Evil men had plundered her body, but it was her own kin who now ravaged her soul. A wicked tongue and haughty heart are surely among the most ruthless of evil’s weapons, and in the blackness of the night, poor Sieghild could bear the eyes of shame no longer. Slipping out of Baldric’s hovel and across the Laubusbach, she wandered past the boundary poles of her manor and was gone.

  Chapter 3

  THE FEUD

  Heinrich had become a cheerful little lad. The child was strong and healthy, keen-eyed and happy. He laughed easily, always eager for the soft comfort of his mother’s arms and the playful toss of his father’s hands. The toddler spent his days trundling about the hovel, bouncing between the trestle table and the three-legged stool. He brought little trouble to his mother, though the same could not be said of his brother, Axel, now nearly one year old.

  Kurt had long since given up his search for Sieghild and had sorrowfully turned his attention to his many duties. The first weeks of June were unusually eventful as Weyer and its neighboring villages had almost fallen prey to the rogue knights of a disenfranchised lord. Christendom’s most admired defenders, the white-robed warrior-monks known as the Knights Templar, soundly defeated the insurgents. The victorious monks secured vast lands adjacent to the western border of the abbey’s manor, and the folk of Weyer were delighted to be living under the watch of such valiant protectors.

  Secretly, Berta was certain that the Templars had won the day because of her own precious relic that she kept hidden under her bed. The relic was a gift given by her father years before with a warning that she should show it to no churchman. It was a gold bezance, suspended by a silver chain, that had been minted in Barcelona nearly a century before. According to the peddler who had sold it to Berta’s father, it had been carried by a French knight in the First Crusade. The knight had touched it to the Holy Sepulchre and had it blessed by the first Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Hughues de Payen. Upon hearing of the battle and the Templars’ great victory, Berta had clutched the relic to her heart and wept for joy.

  Within days Berta had another reason for joy as well. On the thirteenth of June she presented a third healthy child to her husband, a red-haired girl they baptized Effi. To the family’s dismay, however, the colicky bundle did little other than keep everyone from a good night’s rest!

  One bright Sabbath after Midsummer’s, Berta took the baby and her two boys for a morning walk near the bubbling Laubusbach. It wasn’t long before they happened upon Emma and her son, Ingelbert. Berta turned quickly as if to leave, but Heinrich ran ahead to greet Emma’s litt
le lad. Heinrich grinned and reached out his hand to touch Ingelbert’s white hair.

  Ingelbert bore the unfortunate curse of being an outsider. He was the illegitimate son of a woman from an unknown place, of unknown blood, and odd ways. That would have been enough to cause suspicion and fear, but the little fellow’s appearance added yet more to his troubles. Though only three years old, the boy already had the look of an old man. His nose was long and hooked, his thin, white hair wisped atop a sloped head. His front teeth protuded over a jaw that was so weak it virtually disappeared. Yet, for anyone daring enough to see beyond his imperfect shell, there awaited an eager smile, a longing to please, and a selfless heart bursting with kindness.

  Heinrich was still blessed with the innocence of childhood. He saw only a happy face and an honest smile. Only six months younger than Ingelbert, Heinrich was still a bit clumsy on his feet and stumbled toward his new friend until he fell into him. They both tumbled to the ground, laughing and rolling like puppies in the soft grass.

  “No more!” cried Berta nervously. She avoided the sad and knowing eyes of Emma and whispered to herself, “No curses upon us.”

  Emma had kept a respectful distance but now took a slow step toward Berta and offered her a kind word. “Frau Berta? I pray you and your lovely children peace.” She smiled kindly, then turned away from the startled woman and reached her hand toward Heinrich. The boy stood calmly, almost entranced, as Emma gently rolled her finger through a ginger-colored curl looped across his forehead. Heinrich giggled and Emma grinned, her round face lit by her twinkling eyes. “Frau Berta, methinks this boy of yours to be special. There’s a… a light of sorts within him, and a look of mercy… and … ah, well…” With that, Berta shuddered and she quickly led her children away.