Recollecting the scene on the wharf in a flash, Georgette realised that her interference on behalf of the thirsty children had made her seem too independent to be chosen. But Robert? He was tall, if not sturdy. Was there something in his straight, unblinking gaze that had unnerved them?
When Georgette and Robert heard the men’s feet creaking overhead, they sat up slowly. Robert was silent, his face red and blotchy. Georgette sobbed like a lost child.
After a few minutes, Robert put his arm around her shoulders, awkward but comforting. She barely realised that she was gripping his jerkin and weeping into his shoulder, stifling the noise against the cloth. She had cried bitterly twice that day, once because she had not been on the ship, and the second time because she could have been on the ship . . . and because Patrice and so many others just like her were sailing in their innocence to a terrible fate.
‘Can’t we save them?’ she cried. ‘Is there no one who can save them?’
Robert’s currency was thoughts, not feelings. He began to speak his thoughts out loud. And she quietened and listened.
‘They will be far away by now. Any pursuit by good men here in Marseilles, if there be good men any longer, will fail to catch up with those ships. So there is no way to reach them and free them.’ At this, he shuddered, still holding Georgette around her shoulders protectively.
He continued, ‘We know some of the children’s names and we can retrace our route, in order to tell the parents of their sad fate.’
Georgette lifted her face. ‘But perhaps it is better for them not to know; to think their children are in the Holy Land, or even that they are dead and at peace,’ she whispered.
‘You know more about these things than I do,’ Robert said.
‘What about the innkeeper?’ Georgette said. ‘She was kind. Is there no one we can tell?’
‘Aye, we can tell a priest of this town what we heard,’ Robert replied. ‘So that Hugh and William are put on trial for their terrible work. The Holy Roman Emperor himself must blanch at the evil in men who could trade in child pilgrims. But the men will vehemently deny any knowledge of the plot, and it will be our word, two young northerners, against the word of two rich traders from this big southern city.’
There was a long silence while they traced each of their options to a dead end. Then Robert spoke with difficulty,
‘We must bear the truth alone for now. And thank God, for saving us from being among the chosen ones.’
The youngsters reeled with shock and sheer exhaustion. Georgette swayed as she sat and Robert urged her to try to sleep.
‘This is no place for young people without protectors,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, if you are agreeable, we should start back to the north.’
Georgette nodded. She was grateful for the company. But when she closed her eyes, she saw the merry children waving from the deck of the last boat and she began to sob again. Robert stretched out his arm and took one of her hands. And that was how they slept, each with an arm outstretched to the other.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As soon as they left town the next day, returning heavily along the same road the Crusaders had fair danced along only a week before, Georgette felt the change in the weather. A cool wind swirled leaves off the trees and into circles of dust. Sometimes when Georgette woke, wound tightly in her blankets, she found herself lying close to Robert for warmth. Shy, she moved away quietly before he awoke.
They tried to spend their coins sparingly on food along the way, but Robert insisted that they eat at least once every day and drink frequently from the streams they passed.
‘We need our strength,’ he stated, in that way he had of speaking as though they were a single unit.
When all but one small coin of their money had run out, they swallowed their pride and begged for food. Mostly they were met with rejection or food destined for the pig trough. Sometimes they were treated kindly and given enough food that they could divide it into several small meals for the journey. For a few weeks, they supplemented their meagre diet with the last pears left on the trees and little wild apples, sour and twisted and delicious. They picked more than they could eat, and Georgette filled the pockets of her apron.
Along the way they talked or were silent. Robert loved to hear her stories about Father David, about his gentleness, humility and wisdom. His own relationship with his mentor had, he now realised, none of the inspiration and moral guidance that Georgette had experienced.
‘I pray that I will meet your Father David in person,’ he said one day. ‘I talk sometimes to my own teacher in my head, asking him the questions that tormented me on our journey with the Crusaders, but I cannot anticipate that his answers will satisfy my spirit. From what you tell of him, I believe Father David would be able to separate the twisted strands of my thoughts and bring me some clarity and peace.’
‘Indeed he will help you,’ Georgette answered with absolute confidence.
‘His influence glows within you, Georgette,’ Robert replied. ‘You were the first girl I was ever drawn to. When you prayed next to –’ He hesitated, but Georgette’s eyes did not falter. ‘. . . your brother at his death, you renewed something in me that I thought was gone.’
Georgette flushed and they continued on their way. When the road was rough, he took her hand to help her, and kept it for a long time.
On one glorious day, with the sun apparently confused as to the season, they stopped to try their luck at fishing in a pond. Within a minute or two, using Georgette’s cap as a net, they scooped up a barbotte fish with surprising ease. It was rare luck, for they never caught another that way. They lit a fire with Robert’s flint and fed it with the plentiful twigs on the ground.
The fish was large and fleshy and Georgette speared it carefully on a branch and smoked rather than roasted it. Patiently she turned it every few minutes, and when she was sure the inside was cooked through, she lowered it to brown the skin briefly and served it with a flourish on a large flat leaf.
‘Robert, let us take a Sabbath day and rest until tomorrow morning,’ she begged as they ate hungrily. Robert smiled at her for answer as they sat together on the blankets in the sun, their stomachs deliciously full, their spirits higher than they had been since leaving Marseilles.
‘I see I shall never lack for well-cooked food with thee.’
Georgette trembled at his words. This was the furthest he had gone in his assumption of partnership with her. They had not yet spoken of the future after this long journey reached its close. What did he mean?
Robert’s hood cast shadows on his eyes and cheekbones. He never removed it, day or night. Georgette wanted to see his face properly, didn’t want shadows and hiding and secrets between them. Taking a chance, she reached out and took the rim of the cowl in her fingers, looking questioningly at him. But he only looked down, his face suddenly sad and apprehensive and resigned, all at once. As she pushed the hood back very carefully, it fell completely away, to his shoulders, and she saw clearly the raised angry scar stretching from the outside of one eyebrow to the jawline just below his earlobe.
The boy made a quick gesture, reaching to pull the cloth back over himself again, but Georgette caught his hand and held it in one of hers. Without hesitation she traced the bumpy rope with soft, sympathetic fingers, before moving on to trace the well-formed sculpture of his head, the height of his forehead, the neat ears, all so new to her.
‘You are handsome and well formed, Robert,’ Georgette murmured.
Gradually, the blush of Robert’s skin faded. He put out his own hand and lifted her chin so that he could look directly into her eyes. Drawing her into his arms, he lowered his lips to hers. He was not smooth and experienced, but his quiet steadiness was so different from the snatched, ill-placed and clumsy kisses she had experienced on a few occasions in the village from loutish boys.
He pulled her closer, kissing and caressing her. Her body responded and she felt as if she were falling. Her hands cradled the sides of his face, and he
r touch on that hidden area, which had not felt even the sun for years, seemed to inflame him. They lay back on the blanket and he kissed her neck and ears and throat, his breathing growing quicker and deeper.
They were in a storm of love together and, if he had asked, she would have given herself to him without hesitation. She felt love for him so powerful in her body and heart that it was as if, in the eyes of God, they were married. But Robert was still the Abbé and would not take what was not yet his, by the law of the Church. With a groan he dropped his hands and turned his back to her, controlling his ardour with difficulty.
She remained silent, confused, and her arms felt cold from the absence of him.
He did not turn back to face her until his breathing was fairly even again. Then he drew her to him with tenderness and kissed the top of her head. They lay there in utter happiness, watching the blue-and-white glory above them until they both fell asleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When, by Robert’s reckoning, they were about two thirds of the way to Georgette’s home, they began to feel the pain of real hunger. The villagers in this area were inhospitable, grumbling that whether King Philippe Auguste declared it officially or not, they were in the midst of yet another famine year. Georgette and Robert used their last coin to buy food, but after such a dry season, the coin did not purchase as much as it would have in the spring.
They found a few old turnips in an abandoned field, which kept them going for a few days. Some of the farmers allowed them to sleep with the animals in the barn, so fortunately they were not totally exposed to the elements. It had not snowed yet, but Robert dreaded the first snowfall.
‘It’s not only the cold that concerns me,’ he mused aloud to Georgette, in his way. ‘The twigs will be wet and not easy to light. The track may be obliterated if the snow is heavy. I pray the skies will stay clear until we reach your father.’
Their luck ran out a few days later. They had not eaten for more than a day, not since a villager had given them some old bread that she had intended to feed to her pigs.
‘Be off with ye now,’ she ordered as she almost threw them the crusts. ‘I’m too busy nursing me sick children to be disturbed by beggars.’
They thanked her politely and said they would pray for her sick children, but the door had already been slammed in their faces. The bread had lain hard but filling in their bellies as they continued on the road.
Now Robert stopped and observed the sky. ‘It looks like snow,’ he observed. ‘We will need a barn to sleep in tonight.’ But by nightfall they had met with no sign of human habitation.
Robert stopped walking and looked around him.
‘We have to find shelter of any kind,’ Robert said. ‘I feel the first snowflakes, and besides, I am sick.’
Georgette glanced at him in panic. He did indeed look pale and there was sweat above his lips.
‘You’ve caught the ague,’ Georgette cried, as she put her cool hand on Robert’s clammy and burning forehead. Perhaps it was the bread from the house where children were sick. There was no sense in thinking about how he had caught it.
‘There,’ Georgette exclaimed, pointing at an abandoned haystack.
‘It’s as good a place to spend the night as we are likely to find,’ Robert conceded. They burrowed into the centre of the crackly hay and pulled it over them, leaving a narrow passage for fresh air. Through the passage they could watch the snow coming down, but soon it was too dark to see out. Their sleeping hole was not much colder than an ill-maintained barn, and it was not the first time they had slept in the rough heart of a haystack. But it was the first time one of them had been ill. Robert was restless in the night, alternately shivering and sweating, but in the morning he insisted on pressing on.
‘’Tis but a chill I have caught. That, and the dust in the hay. It seemed to enter my very lungs in the night.’
The snow had ceased after thinly coating the ground, but the weather echoed their mood, grey and depressed. Instead of lightening, as the noon hour approached, the sky became darker and more threatening. When they had been travelling for some hours at a slow pace, snow started to fall again. At first, Georgette barely noticed the big flakes, concentrating as she was on supporting Robert’s weight without making it clear that she was doing more than clasping his elbow. In her other hand, she carried both his bundle and her own, and he did not even protest. But when the flakes on her eyelashes made it necessary for her to stop, put down the bundles, and wipe her eyes so she could see clearly, she was alarmed to notice for the first time that the snow had already fallen thick on the ground and showed no sign of ending.
‘Must stay on the road,’ Robert murmured. ‘Mustn’t get lost.’
‘I cannot see the road any more,’ Georgette replied, desperation in her voice.
‘Then we must stop right here.’ His voice was so soft she barely heard him.
Georgette obeyed because she could think of nothing else.
Robert slumped to the ground and Georgette lay down next to him, wrapping him in both blankets. She prayed for what seemed like hours, while Robert drifted in and out of sleep. She prayed mostly for him, but she prayed too for the flawed, failed, fatal Crusade.
‘I wanted to suffer for You, Jesus,’ she whispered. I wanted to prove that I loved You. But nothing on that pilgrimage brought glory to Your name by imitating the goodness of Jesus Christ. Nay, the opposite. Like the Crusaders who passed here before us, we showed those poor infidels an army of cruelty and force, torturing and violating. What now must they think of those who worship Christ? If only they knew Father David.’
She turned her head in the direction of her home. ‘Wise old Father David, you did not want me to join this crusade. But I was in a fervour, a shallow dream, bewitched by my imagination. I was impatient and impulsive and did not wish to see that your spirit was troubled.’
Robert trembled violently and sometimes moaned with pain, pressing his hands to his temples. For a while there was only the sound of Robert’s chattering teeth and laboured breathing. When the night reached its blackest hour, Robert squeezed her hand and spoke in a weak, small voice.
‘Georgette, if I die here, I ask that you find my teacher and deliver a message.’
‘Don’t speak so,’ she begged. ‘In the morn we will meet with some villager who will give us shelter until you are well, and we will be on our journey home again soon. You will deliver the message yourself.’
Robert squeezed her hand again, more urgently this time. ‘Not enough strength to argue. Please listen.’
Georgette deliberately composed herself. He was right, as always.
‘Yes, Robert.’
‘Find Abbot Benedict at the Abbey of Blois. Tell him I thank him for his care of me, for educating and guiding me. Tell him the Crusade was not as I hoped and expected . . . that violence and evil overcame compassion and devotion . . . My soul is confused. Ask him to pray for me.’
He didn’t talk any more. Georgette lay down behind him and slipped one arm under his burning cheek, the other across his chest, keeping her body and legs as close to his as she could and tightening the roll of blankets like a cocoon around him. If I can just keep him warm, she told herself, just keep him warm.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Georgette woke some unknown time later because someone was lifting her away from Robert. With the little strength left in her arms, she held on to Robert, muttering, ‘No, no, have to keep him warm.’
‘It will be better for him and for you if you will loose your hold, young one, and let me put you both into my cart,’ a man’s voice said, and she waked enough to see a dark shape leaning over her, silhouetted against a cold dawn sky. The Lord had heard her prayers. ‘Truly, Jesus is great,’ she whispered, but the man did not reply with an ‘Amen’.
He had turned his attention to Robert, dragging him with difficulty to a rough cart stopped right behind them on the track. The steam from the man’s heavy breathing mingled with that from an extraordina
rily ugly horse chomping at the bit. The man would not be able to lift Robert into the cart, Georgette thought, her body aching to sink back into sleep. She must get up and help. Muttering some strange words that she couldn’t make out, the man desperately heaved Robert halfway up the side of the cart, and she caught up with him just in time to help raise the burden, so that the body went over the wooden ledge and dropped down on to some empty sacks and a little straw.
‘Good girl,’ the man said, leaning his back against the cart with a soft groan. ‘Now you climb up there too and I’ll take you both home to my wife. She will know what to do.’
The horse’s gait was as awkward as his looks. As he stumbled along, Georgette slid from side to side with every lurch. Robert’s body was limp and his eyes closed. She tried to hold him still against the jolting, but he knocked against the side of the cart again and again without any sign of consciousness. And again and again, Georgette prayed that the body she was trying to hold still was not lifeless.
The man knew Robert was past hearing and he must have thought the girl had long been asleep, for he did not lower his voice as he talked with his wife before the fire in their simple farmhouse.
‘Crusaders! In our home,’ the woman said.
‘They’re not Crusaders, they’re only children,’ he protested.
‘What kind of parents allow their children to march off at this age, Samuel? If we had had a child . . .’ Her voice cracked.
‘The kind of parents who believe what the priests tell them,’ was his reply.
Georgette was lying on a straw pallet close to Robert’s still form, drowsy and warm but keeping herself awake to watch the precious sight of Robert’s chest moving slightly, rhythmically. Each breath carried a message. I am alive. I did not die out there in the snow. I am still with you.
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