Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade Read online

  Karl and Maria stood slightly to the side of the others and listened intently as Father Pious offered his blessing and words of encouragement. Karl looked jealously at his friends. There was Otto, the miller’s son, a rather sturdy, blonde boy of thirteen with freckles and bright green eyes. Beside him wobbled Lothar, Otto’s youngest brother, a mere four years old and still chubby and soft. And close by the trunk of the linden stood Ingrid, a yeoman’s daughter, with her sister, Beatrix, of about eight. Karl thought Ingrid was pretty; he loved how her long red hair was knotted at the base of her craning neck and how she smiled so gently. He always liked Ingrid and, with a sheepish grin, he waved an affectionate good-bye.

  Maria whispered to her blushing brother, “Look, Ingrid takes her little brother, too … and he can barely walk. How shall he get to Palestine?”

  Karl heaved his chest. “Because God goes with him.” He waved to this one and that, and then to three of his second cousins: Georg, sixteen; Wolfhard, fourteen; and Richarda, twelve. They were the children of his father’s first cousin, Richard, who had joined the fight against the Stedingers and also never returned.

  Over a score of Weyer’s children now waited bravely, dressed as they always were in their homespun clothing. The boys, of course, wore leggings—a few wearing them atop shorter linen under-leggings. On their upper bodies they wore hooded, woolen tunics, cut at mid-thigh like field serfs, and bound with rope belts. The girls wore linen under-gowns that were sleeveless and fell to their ankles. Atop this they wore sleeved, woolen over-gowns that also fell to their ankles and were bound by belts. Few had shoes, though some wrapped their feet in strips of cowhide or pigskin. None carried a cloak, though some tied rolled blankets to their backs, and each gripped their handheld wooden crosses proudly. Most had their faces scrubbed before leaving and had their stomachs filled, but few were stocked with provisions.

  Pious vowed that they would be fed and sheltered by the angels, for “not a sparrow falls without God knowing.” He concluded his blessing, pronounced his benediction, and extended his hand to the company kneeling at his feet. The young crusaders then rose, one by one, to kiss the hand of their priest and the silver crucifix he held to their lips.

  To Karl the moment was enchanted, save the impatience it incited in his heart. He closed his eyes for an instant and pictured his triumphant entrance through the arched gates of the Holy City.

  Karl turned to see Maria smiling and waving a final farewell to young Lothar and he suddenly realized that he had no more time to savor the occasion. His good friends were truly on their way. They were standing in a column and beginning to sing.

  Pious pointed them southwestward on the Oberbrechen road. “Follow the Laubusbach to Oberbrechen,” he told them, “then overland to the mighty Rhine.” He instructed them to turn south at the Rhine and find the city of Mainz where they’d reach the main column. From there, he said, they would travel through the great mountains into a strange land, then cross the sea to set their feet on Holy Ground. “Afore St. Michael’s Day,” Pious cried, “you shall all be fixing your crosses in Jerusalem.”

  Two days quickly passed and on the final evening of June an impatient Father Pious arrived at the baker’s hut with Frau Anka. “You shall soon not catch the others,” he warned. “I believe, Wilhelm, that you ought honor thy prior thoughts on this matter … thoughts that served thee and thine so very well.” He raised an eye, then turned to Karl. “And you, you whom God has touched with a special heart, know well what is thy duty. Has thy faith failed thee? Has courage fled away? Or, perhaps you have lost thy love of God. Woe to thy poor mother.”

  “Ja, boy,” Anka snapped. “If y’ve no love for God left, then be out with it. But then say that y’ve no love for your mama, for she clings to life waiting for your penance. You, Karl, know more than this doltish brother of yours that God only loves those who obey.”

  Pious nodded and folded his arms atop his rotund belly.

  Karl twirled the edges of his tunic and stared at the floor. He cast a quick glance at the steely-eyed Wil, who stormed from the common room and into his mother’s bedchamber. Marta had gone from bad to better and to bad again. She was sleeping but breathing quick, short breaths. Wil stood by her side, staring at the wet cloth in his hand.

  Suddenly, the priest appeared in the room. He said nothing but leveled his eyes at the boy. Wil stiffened but held his ground like a cornered fox. Each knew the other’s mind, however, and there would be no conflict this day, no parry and thrust of words, no threats or insults, no oaths nor blasphemy. Instead, Wil yielded. He gave his mother a half-teared glance and simply said, “We go on the morrow.”

  So, true to his word, Wil rallied his brother and sister before the next day’s lauds and ordered them about their proper duties in candlelight. He gathered what food as could be carried and laid it along the table. He packed the medicines he took from Lukas in the satchel, though he set most of his mother’s herb by her kettle. The lad quietly directed Karl and Maria to bind what they could in their thin quilts and make ready for their journey.

  Tomas suddenly appeared in the doorway. “I wish to go with you.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to leave this place,” said Tomas.

  Wil eyed the boy’s sack and noticed shoes on his feet.

  “How did you come upon those?”

  “Uh … Pious gave them to me if I’d go.”

  Wil hesitated. Tomas was not trustworthy. Wil quickly reasoned it might be better if the boy was away from the family bakery. “Ja… you may join with us … but at the first trouble you’ll be marching alone.”

  Tomas shrugged as Wil walked back to his mother’s room with Karl and Maria. The three knelt respectfully at her bedside. It was not an easy moment for any of them, Karl least of all, as they each took a turn kissing her hand. He struggled to hold a torrent of tears at bay, his face contorting and swelling with every passing breath. Maria wrapped her tiny arms round her mother’s sweated head and wept openly. Wil tightened his jaw and turned from the room as Anka entered the hut.

  “I don’t know your game, y’old hag,” Wil grumbled with a curled lip. “But I am quite sure you’ve an eye on this house, the bakery, and our half-hide. I warn you and that rotted old husband of yours that we’ll return. And when we do, you had best not laid a hand on any what’s not yours.”

  Anka, red-faced, answered, “And who shall pay the death tax for your miserable Mutti?”

  “Give the bailiff a hog … and no more. By God I swear, woman, you had best be on your guard for my return. And know this, too. I’ve the miller watching how m’mother is nursed. I had better have a good report or may God have mercy on you! Now, look here….” Wil directed Anka to the herb. “Pious says we ought give this to her thrice a day. If she lives, you shall have a quarter of our land at my return. I have foresworn it to Father Albert.”

  Anka grunted. She had been Marta’s childhood friend but had spent most of her years envious and coveting. She picked up the tin and nodded.

  “Now, leave us.”

  Anka strutted out the door, leaving the baker’s family quite alone. Wil beckoned Karl and Maria to his side, and the three stood quietly at their doorsill for just another moment. They listened to the crowing cockbirds and the early morning rustle of the village. Each seemed to know this would be the last morning of things as they had always been.

  Wil adjusted Lukas’s worn satchel on his shoulder and secured Ansel’s dagger in his belt. Karl clutched his necklace and prayed that the Virgin would spare his mother. Maria smiled and plucked a small wildflower from the ground. They each then whispered their mother “Godspeed,” and, without ceremony or song, they and Tomas stepped onto the footpaths of Weyer.

  The air was cool and clean; the sun was rising bold and bright. It was then, in the earliest light of the first day of July in the year of grace 1212, that the four began their journey.

  Chapter 5

  PIETER THE BROKEN

  He was baptized
Johann Pieter, third son of Otto, Duke of Franconia, on the twenty-seventh day of August in the year of our Lord 1135. A bright and quick-witted student, he had excelled in his studies under the severe tutelage of the school masters at Aachen. His unabashed curiosity and uncommon intelligence eventually earned him entrance into the highly regarded University of Bologna and private study in Salerno and at the prestigious and exacting library at Worms.

  Despite his scholastic excellence, Pieter’s inclination toward lighthearted mischief had rankled the furrowed brow of more than one of his narrow-eyed examiners. Yet the gentle spirit and soft heart that so clearly underpinned his playfulness inevitably won the affections of the most rigid of his masters.

  Pieter married once but suffered a widower’s agony shortly thereafter. Brokenhearted but determined, he received his Master of Arts in philosophy from the University of Cologne at the age of twenty on a cool, bright October morning. But no sooner had he gripped the coveted rolled parchment in his steady hand than he announced his intention to abandon the lofty world of the mind. “Instead,” he stated flatly, “I’ll measure my steel by the bitter business of combat.”

  And so, despite the pleas and prayers of priest and pedagogue alike, Pieter abandoned further education and bowed his knee to Friederich the Fat of Bremen as a sergeant-in-training for his formidable order of Saxon knights. The spirited young man spent a cold winter of harsh training within the damp and foreboding fortress at Bremen. Friederich’s hard-eyed instructors taught their earnest liegeman the macabre arts of warfare, and the youth learned well. Though adequate with a long-sword, he seemed particularly adept with the crossbow, lance, and flail.

  Pieter’s first encounters with the horror of battle had proven him to be a loyal and courageous soldier, cunning and fierce, but with a ready heart of mercy and compassion. His broad shoulders and sinewy arms bore well his chain mail shirt and leather vest. Long, brown curls draped below the turned edges of his steel helmet, and his large hands gripped the fearsome flail he faithfully carried. Friederich loved him as a son and described him as having “the heart of a lion but the disposition of a court puppy.”

  His valor in the bloody battle at Tortona was chronicled by Friederich’s secretary and read ceremoniously to the court of Barbarossa himself; for it was none other than the stouthearted Pieter who had rallied his troop of footmen to rescue a battered unit of mounted knights from their encircling enemies. The Lombardian duces of Milan had all but closed their fist around Friederich and his beleaguered Saxons when the full fury of Pieter’s charge crashed against the enemy’s flank. A savage butchery released the Germans from the snare, and the day was won, though at a terrible cost.

  So, before the assembled host of his knights, a grateful Friederich the Fat intended to knight Pieter and grant him a large tilled and pastured fief in Saxony. But on that glorious morning the young man looked up from bended knee and humbly declined the generous offer. He was heard to whisper, “Forgive me, my lord, but there is no necessity of reward for duty done, nor am I able to pleasure in any such token of slaughter.” Pieter had lost his lust for battle—and he was relieved for it.

  Young Pieter, ever purposed, returned to a more ordinary life to re-enlist his quest for the understanding of the worlds within himself and without. He had little passion for the material interests of the growing merchant class or the political pursuits of his own titled family. His soul yearned for peace, and he yielded his life to the service of the Church of Rome.

  It was behind the arched glass of cathedrals and the high walls of monasteries that he spent the next three decades. Ever the quick learner, he rapidly advanced from a simple parish priest to the clerk of the influential Archbishop Chandeleux. But as the years began to gray his thinning, brown hair and strip his limbs of earlier bulk, his merciless pursuit of understanding drove him deeper into himself and into the mysteries of his faith. Frustrated and searching, Pieter eventually resigned his position to enter a foreboding Carthusian monastery in distant Neumark. What better way, he pondered, to learn of God’s ways than to spend my life with feather in hand and eyes on His Word? So he lived by quill and candle, a copyist, vowed to scratch the Holy Script into yellow parchment on a small, well-worn, wooden table.

  During those silent, monotonous years Brother Pieter again learned much. And in his learning he grew restless, for the Word he read seemed contrary to his training. Always wishing to be respectful, yet compelled by conscience, the monk strained to endure the apparent conflict. At last, no longer able to restrain his spirit, he endeavored to engage his fellow brothers, his prior, and finally his abbot. His superiors responded to his appeals with obstinance and rebuke, ultimately spawning a rebellion within Pieter that expressed itself with increasing abrasiveness and a broadening hostility toward the practice, doctrine, and authority of his Church. Even five years of exile to an order laboring within the bleak marshes of Silesia could not silence the persistent man.

  In the end, his refusal to repent of his gross insubordination warranted banishment under papal anathema. Though stripped of vocation, title, and inheritance, Pieter’s hardy spirit was strangely enlivened, not quenched. He defiantly left his vows behind and wandered the Rhineland and the Alps as a self-declared “beggar priest,” serving the spiritual needs of the lowly, the unwanted, and the misfits of Christendom.

  He had been blessed with more years than most. His old head was now covered with fine, wispy, white hair which yielded to the slightest brush of even the lightest breeze. His narrow, bearded face was weathered and wrinkled but his deep-set, blue eyes sparkled with a passion and spirit far more vigorous than the apparent state of his poor shell. His torso was bent inward, as if bearing the weight of the world, and dutifully borne by bowed and spindly legs. His long fingers wrapped a well-worn shepherd’s crook and at his side hung a scuffed, leather satchel. These were his only accessories other than an olive-wood cross suspended on a braided cord necklace that he sheltered under his tattered, black robe. Pieter treasured his little cross, for it was a gift carved for him a few years prior by an Irish monk whom he had dearly loved. While on a pilgrimage to Palestine the Irishman had discovered the wood at the base of Golgotha and fashioned it into the cross of the Celts—a circle, like the sun, wrapping the intersection of the T. Pieter was taken by more than its simple beauty, however, for, unlike the polished silver hanging around most priests’ necks, this little cross was a true cross—one complete with rough edges and splinters.

  The old priest could be seen from afar stepping the dirt roads of Christendom with his amusing, rolling gait, like a creaking, old wagon with a leaning wheel. More than a decade had now passed since his body had been crushed by the wide wheels of an oxcart that drifted through a ditch in which he had paused to sleep. Cared for by the ample love and adequate good sense of some local peasants, he miraculously survived, his straightaway stride being the only thing lost. From that time forward he was known by the peasants who loved him as Pieter the Broken.

  His journeys had taught him well of things common to all men. Pieter had learned to discern the depravation of peasant, prince, and priest alike, and he was not shy about sharing his observations. He grew in wisdom and knowledge and was keen to offer both to ears willing and not.

  Not content to be alone always, he was most pleased to travel alongside his dearest companion, Solomon. His trusted friend was a scruffy dog who had found Pieter sleeping in a flax bundle almost six years ago near Limburg-on-the-Lahn. Unlike his master, Solomon was of low breeding, but like his master, was a tenderhearted rascal. His gray hair was usually matted and tangled with briars and brush, and though some would say he lacked an immortal spirit, his trusting eyes revealed an eager soul within.

  The sun was hot, hotter than usual for early July, and the summer of 1212 was proving to be a difficult one. The crops stood wilted and stiff in their hard, dry furrows. The grain harvest would begin in several weeks, but the yellowing fields of rye and millet were scant and without promise. Hay
had been cut and sheathed but no second growth was expected. Pieter and Solomon sat quietly in the cool shade of a maple tree just beyond the walls of Mainz and watched a discouraged harvester sharpen his scythe.

  Pieter, too, was discouraged. For the past two or three weeks he had unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade scores of little crusaders from their holy march. Each gentle effort had been met with an equally gentle refusal as they zealously tread by, clutching their wooden crosses close to their breasts. A band of thirty or so had dismissed his pleading earlier that morning, and Pieter now cast a sad eye toward a distant field.

  “Look there, old Solomon,” he said as he pointed his curled finger to a flock of sheep dotting the green plain. “Every lamb needs a ewe and every ewe a shepherd. ’Tis how life is ordered. The little lambs marching by us have neither ewe nor shepherd and my heart aches so for them.”

  Solomon, seeming to understand the old man’s melancholy, licked his friend’s face and rested his shaggy head on Pieter’s lap. Then, with a sigh, the priest pulled himself up by his trusted staff and headed into Mainz, hoping to find a little bread for himself and some scraps for his good fellow.

  Mainz was a busy town pressed tightly along the left bank of the Rhine River. Its ancient, stone walls guarded well both Archbishop Siegfried Ill’s huge, red-stone cathedral and the clutter of wattle-and-daub dwellings scattered within its massive shadow. Pieter watched in amazement as clusters of busy workmen clung to towering scaffolding like so many bees on a summer hive. “Indeed,” pondered the old man to Solomon, “’tis an awesome sight and most deserving of our sincerest accolade. But I do ponder to whom it confers glory. I propose that God may be easier found by the modest hearths of those timid hovels dwarfed and shamed by such a folly as this.” His anger rose and he turned his eyes to the town square.