Pilgrims of Promise: A Novel (The Journey of Souls Series) Page 8

  The words stung the lad, and he clenched his jaw. “Sometimes there’s too much to forgive!”

  Now Frieda bristled. “Ja?” she snapped. “You must think your sins weren’t too much then?”

  Wil reddened, but he had no answer. Wounded by the maiden’s rebuke, he turned away.

  Frieda sighed. She wished that she could relieve the weight of bitterness that still bore so heavily upon Wil’s broad shoulders. She kicked at the ground lightly, frustrated with herself. I push too hard, she thought. I need to give him room.

  A damp breeze blew lightly, and Frieda turned her face to the gray clouds sagging heavily over the bay. Her thoughts turned to her sister, Gertrude, drowned in the sea, and to her brother, Manfred, drowned in the flood. “It is my fault they are gone,” she muttered. “I brought them on this fools’ crusade.” A muffled peal of thunder rumbled in the mountains, and rain began to crash atop the tile roof of the arcade. The young woman shuddered. Through what waters must I yet pass?

  Pieter had calculated his journey to be about thirty-five leagues, maybe a little more. He and his companions were well rested and well fed, and he estimated they could travel five or six leagues a day on the easy roads of the Po River plain. They’d need to climb through the Appenines, but even so, he was confident they would arrive in Arona within ten days.

  The morning he, Solomon, and their two young companions began was sunny and bright. The aquamarine bay sparkled, and the old man nearly fell asleep to the steady rhythm of the monks pulling steadily on their well-worn wooden oars. For their part, the brethren were content to hum happily or recite a psalm to the metered measure of their rowing.

  The small boat splashed quietly forward, following the bending shoreline of the promontory about a bowshot from its rocky edge. Otto rested comfortably with Solomon dozing on his lap. The stout lad had been a faithful comrade from the first days of the crusade. He had left Weyer behind days before Wil, Karl, and Maria had taken their first steps.

  As the miller’s son, Otto had spent many hours unloading baskets of flour at Heinrich’s bakery. For the six years the baker had been gone, the lad had watched Karl and Wil do the work. Otto understood Wil’s anger. But Otto also understood Heinrich more than the man could know. The lad had heard rumors in the village for years—rumors kept very much alive by the man’s bitter wife. But Otto had become friends with Brother Lukas in the few years before the crusade, so he had heard other things as well. “The man who speaks first seems right,” the monk had once said, “until the other answers.”

  “I wish Wil would forgive his father,” Otto mumbled.

  Pieter stirred. “Eh?”

  Otto shrugged. “I say I wish Wil would forgive his father.”

  “Ja, lad. Me, as well, but it is not something that can be forced.”

  Otto nodded thoughtfully, then blurted, “I miss Lukas.”

  “Eh?”

  “I was thinking of a monk at home, in the abbey by Weyer. He was a clever man … you would have liked him.”

  “Perhaps I’ll meet him?”

  “No. Wil found him dead just before he left.”

  “Ah. Well, you must tell me about him.”

  Otto beamed. His cheeks rounded like two red apples under a September sky. The boy had loved Lukas, just like Wil had—and just like Heinrich had in his own time. Otto proceeded to tell Pieter of Lukas’s odd notions and of his wisdom. He spoke of his potions and his love for walks in the forests. “I helped him fill his satchel with mushrooms and berries and strange things. He loved to sneak away from the cloister whenever he could! He loved to play ball with us, and he showed me the place he called the home of the Magi!”

  Pieter chuckled. He did wish he could have met the man.

  “Wil carries Brother Lukas’s satchel. Sometimes I like to touch it; it helps me remember him.”

  Pieter nodded and laid his hand on the lad’s sandy hair. He looked into his broad face and realized that he had often taken the steady fellow for granted. “I am glad you’ve come with me, Otto. I pray we get you home safely.”

  The boy took a deep breath. “Sometimes methinks m’home’s now with you … and with Wil and Frieda … and the others.” Otto had been a good son to an unworthy man. His mother had died during a plague that had ravaged Weyer. Bitter and lonely, his father had become a drunken fool, oft beating the boy without cause and without mercy.

  The old man sat thoughtfully and turned his face to the fortress of the Dragonara drawing close. He surveyed the muscled shoulders surrounding the sea and wondered where his own home really was. He looked into the sky and noticed it beginning to fill with gray clouds drifting from the southeast.

  “Father,” called one of the monks. He pointed to the sky. “Sirocco winds … they’ll bring rain to this side of the mountains today.”

  The boys groaned. “No more sunshine.”

  “Ah, lads,” chuckled Pieter. “The sun always shines … ‘tis only hidden by the clouds!”

  Within the half hour, the monks delivered their boat to the Camogli beach tucked tightly within a sandy cove surrounded by jutting rocks. The village fishermen had long since left for the day, and it was nearly empty. A few old women were picking mussels from tidal pools; others were mending nets. Pieter urged his two companions to keep a sharp eye at all times. “If challenged, you are novices on a pilgrimage with me. Our clothing is sound; we should look the part. I do the talking, and if you are asked about the crusade, you deny your part in it. Do you understand?”

  The boys nodded. The boat was dragged ashore, and its occupants climbed out to stretch. They checked their gear and their clothing carefully. The cloister’s cobbler had made sturdy rucksacks for the two boys, and the kitchener had filled them with many days’ worth of meat and cheese.

  The priest cast a wary eye toward the fortress perched nearby, then urged his lads to make ready. “We must begin. We’ll follow the Genoa road until the first trail into the mountains. I’ve little interest in tempting the city guard.”

  The monks agreed. “Si, si, Padre, it would not be wise. Now, go with God.” They recited two psalms, prayed over the travelers, and kissed each on their cheeks. With a final bow they turned away sadly and left Pieter and his companions quite alone.

  Heinz waved to the monks and then turned his squinty eyes toward the roadway and grinned. He was suddenly itching to begin. The happy young man laughed and poked Otto in the belly. “Ready, fat fellow?” he teased.

  Otto laid a thick hand on the scamp’s shoulder and squeezed it hard. With feigned menace he growled, “Say it again and I’ll bash yer nose … Elfman!”

  Chapter Five

  MARIA’S SONG

  Pieter and his companions hurried away from the fearsome Dragonara, through Camogli, and into the mountains. They hurried past the menacing fortresses dotting the ridges near Genoa, and within two days they felt confident that they had pressed their way to relative safety.

  The November air was damp but not cold. Autumn rains fell, but the pilgrims continued steadily on, traveling along minor roadways and a few remote trails before descending onto a well-traveled highway that followed the stony shores of the Scrivia River. They continued without incident past numbers of clay-brick villages and soon entered Tortona, where all three paused to rest in a small piazza and to reminisce about their last visit to the city.

  “If you could’ve seen yourself!” laughed Otto.

  “Ja! I’ve ne’er seen the likes of it… and how the old gentlemen in the pool cried out!” Heinz howled.

  Pieter chuckled. “Aye, lads. I couldn’t see m’self, but I surely saw the fear in their eyes!”

  The three were remembering the bath at Tortona, and they chortled about the cursing noblemen, the scowling bath matron, and the red-faced Frieda. “Ah, boys,” said Pieter, “a good time, indeed.” He sighed and smiled. “But we’ve a need to keep moving. I think it best we not follow our old route to Pavia but turn on the highway to Allesandria instead. The land stays fl
at all the way, so the walk should be easy.”

  “Methinks it ugly here,” blurted Heinz.

  Pieter nodded. “Aye, perhaps a bit. But most of the world is gray by Martinmas.”

  “Then white for Advent,” added Otto.

  “And green for Easter and yellow by All Hallows’!” chattered Heinz cheerfully.

  “True enough, lads.”

  “But look, even the dirt is gray here, and ‘tis all flat.”

  “Well, be thankful ‘tis flat, lad!”

  The three turned onto a wide roadway that led them through the plain west toward Allesandria. The air had grown colder, though not as damp as it had felt in Liguria. They marched on, north through the lands of the Savoy family and across the narrow Tanaro. They passed countless drab villages and a few walled fortresses until the landscape gradually began to change. They descended low hills lined with tidy vineyards and passed gardens tilled and fallow. Finally they stood at the banks of the Po River.

  “We need to ford there,” pointed Otto. A long line of rocks revealed an area of shallows.

  Heinz stared at the water and grumbled. “Now we’ll be wet all day!”

  “Only your feet, lad,” chuckled Pieter, “only your feet.” The priest stepped boldly into the chilly waters of the Po and raised his staff triumphantly. “Now, lads, follow me!” He took three confident strides, then stumbled forward with a loud oath. To the wild acclaim of his comrades, the old man heroically regained his balance and took a deep breath. “Ha! Almost!” he cried. He ordered his fellows to follow, and he took another step—only to slip off an unseen rock and plunge headlong into a swirling pool!

  Shouting every blasphemy the howling boys had ever heard, the old priest found his footing, then thrashed through the water toward the far shore.

  “Only yer feet, Father!” roared Heinz. “Only yer feet!”

  The Po was quickly left behind, and the trio spent the fifth day of its journey marching past the brown soil of the northern Piedmont’s fallowed fields. Soon they were within earshot of the graceful herons of the Sesia and then finally entered the town of Vercelli, where a church gave them shelter. Grateful, they stretched out comfortably before a generous hearth and accepted a meal of fresh wheat bread, olive oil, chicken stew, and a large platter of boiled vegetables.

  The following night was spent farther north with some French pilgrims traveling from distant Lyons to the grand cathedral in Milan. At first glance, the Frenchmen thought Pieter and his boys to be a respectable trio of a priest and two novices. Believing them to be so, the pilgrims graciously shared their provisions under their canvas tent. Unfortunately, their fine red wine oiled Pieter’s tongue, and he soon told them of the failed crusade. Upon learning of the children’s past, the mood changed. In one voice they insisted the three be sent away. “We’ll not share the night with the likes of these!” cried one.

  Astonished, Pieter objected loudly.

  “Non, old man. Non! Mon Dieux! We’ve heresies all over France! We’ve no need to suffer the spirits of these who have abandoned the faith as well!”

  Pieter stood to his feet and shook his crook at them all. “A curse be upon you, imbécile! No faith in all Christendom has withstood such a test. You pitiful dogs are not fit to share your table with them.” He spat, then snatched up his satchel. “We leave you to your crumbs! Come, lads; come Solomon. We’ve better places to be.”

  The two boys had not understood the Frenchmen’s words, and Pieter chose to shield them. “Ah, you know those dandies! They think we Teutons to be barbarians and not fit to share their table. Ach, let them gag on their snails and their dainties.”

  It was late on the eighth day when the three made camp at the south shore of Lago Maggiore. The night was cold but clear, and the two boys scampered about gathering firewood under the cover of a starry sky. Pieter walked away from the fire and knelt alongside Solomon to pray atop the pebbly shore. From the moment he had left San Fruttuoso, he had thought of little else other than Maria. “Is she alive or with the angels, Solomon?” Now that he was within a half-day’s journey of the answer, he secretly feared what they might find. Oh, that I might see her smile again. He remembered Maria’s innocence, her unsullied charity, and her selflessness. Such a sweet child, he thought. Cursed with deformity yet always giving. His throat swelled, and he faced the dark, lapping waters of the lake sadly. “Another miracle, Karl?” he whispered. “Could there yet be one more?”

  “I confess I can barely take another step. My legs are trembling like a sinner at the Judgment.” Pieter paused to stare some three bowshots ahead at the clay rooftops of Arona peeking above its sandstone walls. He swallowed hard against a mouth now dry with fear. His heart fluttered nervously, and he stooped to cup some clean water from Lago Maggiore. “I suppose I should feel comfort if she is with the angels now,” he muttered. “But, by the saints, I pray she is yet here, with us still.”

  Otto and Heinz had said little that morning. They stared anxiously at the gray clouds above and at the silhouettes of the haze-shrouded mountains rising in the distance to the north. Heinz skipped a stone across the water. He counted three skips, and then grumbled and threw another. A light rain began to fall, dimpling the lake lightly until a blast of cold wind suddenly scratched the water’s surface. To the boys it seemed like a dark omen.

  “Pieter, we buried four by this lake.”

  The old man nodded as he lifted his hood over his head. “Aye, lad. One should have been me.”

  “And what of Anna?”

  “I am chief of all cowards,” moaned Pieter. “I fear for the both of them. Anna was such a quiet child. She asked for little and marched bravely. I can still see her little white head bobbing in the column.” He filled his lungs with a deep breath and released it slowly. “Enough. ‘Tis time to know.” He drove his staff hard into the earth and set his face forward. “Follow, boys, and take heart. What is to be shall be.”

  The three said nothing more for a long while as brief gusts of wind rumpled their clothing. None wanted to go on, none wanted know, yet they knew they must. Anna, of course, was beloved to be sure. But Maria had given so much to all of them. It was she who had given them smiles when darkness had nearly overwhelmed them; it was she who would sing in the midst of misery. The little girl was uncommonly blessed with a quiet grace of which she was utterly unaware. She saw only others’ needs and served them with an ineffable wealth of kindness. Maria’s disfigured left arm had provided good sport to her many lessers—most of whom were pleased to believe that God’s judgment had been foisted on the fair child and not themselves. Yet the long-suffering Mädel had returned charity for evil at every turn, saving her tears for secret places.

  The three figures and their companion moved quietly along the lakeshore. In the distance they could see the rising foothills of the mighty Alps; behind them, the collapsing landscape leading to the plain from which they had just come.

  Just ahead lay Arona, a prosperous town built directly on the edge of the clear lake where wide-hulled fishing boats and tangles of nets lined the stony beach. On Arona’s northern edge was a sheer cliff nearly twenty rods high—“the first Alp,” Pieter had said—and atop it sat the Rocca di Arona, the gray-stone castle of an aging lord.

  “I remember the cliff, but not the keep,” said Otto. “The cliff has two eye sockets … it made me think it was the face of a giant!”

  Heinz shuddered. “A fortress atop the head of a sleeping giant!”

  Pieter said nothing. He was silently rehearsing the emotions he might expect to feel before the hour would pass. He withdrew Maria’s cross from his belt and stared at it, suddenly lost in a swirl of memories. Little more than bumpy apple wood, the small icon seemed to have empowered the little girl with amazing faith. He could see it held high in her hand in the haunted forests of the Rhineland, in the horrors of Basel’s dungeon, and high above the world in the mighty Alps. He then remembered it in Karl’s belt, somehow remaining unbroken in the lad’s awful death. T
he old man kissed it reverently.

  Under a lessening rain, the three entered the town past the sleeping guard of the south gate and hurried uphill toward the Benedictine Abbey of Saints Gratian and Felinus. The cloister overlooked the town’s market from a low ridge that paralleled the lake on its western side. It, and the attached church, the Chiesa die S. Martin, had been founded nearly three centuries earlier by Count Ammiz-zone, a captain in the army of Otto I of Saxony. The church’s reliquary boasted the remains of the martyrs Gratian and Felinus—soldiers in Rome’s imperial army martyred in Perugia nearly one thousand years prior.

  The abbey itself had become wealthy and powerful, owning lands all over the Piedmont and Lombardy. Its wealth, in turn, had created opportunities for the residents of Arona and the lord of its castle to enjoy the pleasures of good food, fine clothing, and trinkets of silver and gold.

  “These folk do well,” said Otto. “Methinks most to be rich.”

  Pieter didn’t answer.

  “What say you, Pieter?”

  The priest said nothing. His face was hard, and he gripped his staff with whitened knuckles. So no more words were spoken as the three black-clothed pilgrims and their gray dog climbed the streets of Arona toward the walled cloister. It was a wet, gloomy noon, and the bells of S. Martiri pealed the hour of sext. Pieter paused for a moment and surveyed the folk milling past empty booths. “Not Saturday, I suppose, nor Wednesday. I’ve lost count.”

  In fact, it was neither Saturday nor Wednesday, but rather Monday, the sixteenth day of November when Pieter the Broken, Otto of Weyer, Heinz “Elfman” (as some were apt to call him), and their dripping dog stood before the portal of the abbey. The old man hesitated for a brief moment and lifted Maria’s cross from his belt. Staring at it he mumbled, “Ave crux spas unica. Hail the Cross, our only hope.” He then rapped firmly on the wooden door with the end of his staff.