Crusade

by Linda Press Wulf

  When she realised what the man and woman were saying, she almost spoke up. It was my choice. My father and Father David did not want me to go, but they couldn’t stop me. But her fatigue, combined with her desire not to contradict the hosts who had saved their lives, overwhelmed her impulse.

  The wife spoke again. ‘And the danger to us? To the whole village? That boy is so weak. If anything happens to them here, you know we’ll be blamed.’

  The man shrugged helplessly. ‘What else was there for me to do, Hannah? Leave them to die in the snow?’

  In the silence that followed, Georgette fell asleep and never found out why the woman thought they would be blamed if Robert died.

  They stayed with their benefactors, who introduced themselves as Mollin and Anita, for five days. For the first two, Robert was too weak to talk; almost too weak to sip the sweetened warm milk the woman gave Georgette to slip between his lips. On the third day, he was able to rise from his straw pallet and walk, with support, to sit on a bench before the fire and murmur his thanks for every attention. On the fourth, he proclaimed he was well enough to take a walk outdoors, but his hosts said it was too snowy that day and he had better stay in the house. Georgette too was dissuaded from helping with outdoor farm chores ‘to avoid becoming cold and falling ill with whatever had ailed the young man’. So she built up her strength in the warm hut, caring for Robert and doing what she could to assist her hosts indoors by way of cooking and cleaning and spinning. She had never stayed in a hut with a chimney before and she loved watching the smoke from the hearth spiral up into a dark hole and disappear like magic.

  On the fifth day, Robert announced that he would be strong enough to depart with Georgette the following morning.

  The man looked at him doubtfully. ‘Perhaps one more day of rest, to be sure?’

  But Robert and Georgette were in accord, as always. Those who waited for them had waited too long. They must relieve that anxiety by reaching home as soon as possible. And they longed for home more passionately as they drew closer and closer. Perhaps two weeks of travel remained, depending on their pace. Only two weeks, after all the terrible months.

  That was the day the woman suspended her largest iron pot from the pot hanger in the fireplace and heated water in it. She hung a blanket from the ceiling in one corner of the hut and then helped the man to carry inside a huge cauldron that they placed behind the blanket, creating a private area. Robert and Georgette watched with interest as the man carried behind the curtain first several buckets of hot water and then a bucket or two of cold water from the well.

  ‘Come, young Robert,’ the man said. ‘I will help you to bathe.’

  Robert disappeared behind the curtain and Georgette heard plenty of splashing. When he emerged, he was pink and shiny, wound in a blanket that had been warming near the fire. Then the woman took Georgette behind the curtain. Robert marvelled at the sheen in her loose, flowing hair when she too was escorted back to the hearth, dressed in her own shift that had been scrubbed and stiffened with flour-water the previous day. It was the first time each of them had ever washed their entire body at one time, other than by swimming in a river, and they felt wonderfully fresh.

  Their hosts carried the cauldron outside and apparently took their own baths, for they fairly gleamed when they returned, the man in a long white tunic and the woman in an embroidered white shift.

  ‘We shall have a special dinner tonight. Your last night with us,’ announced the woman, spreading a clean piece of linen over the trestle table and bringing out not one but two candles. The wine was sweet and served in a single silver-coloured goblet that they passed from hand to hand. The man and woman’s lips moved before they drank their share, and Georgette wondered if they were making a secret wish perhaps. For herself, she wished that apple cider had been served rather than wine: the pullet the woman had roasted was so salty that she had to drink mug after mug to quench her thirst.

  After dinner, the man turned to Robert.

  ‘Is it possible you know the game of chess, young Robert?’

  Smiling, Robert answered in the affirmative. ‘Some years ago, there was a nobleman forced to stay at my abbey for a few weeks because of a broken leg. He was most impatient at the inactivity and for his amusement he taught me the rules of chess and we played every day. But I have not had any partner since, and I forget the rules.’

  As excited as a boy who has found another boy to play ball with, the man dismissed Robert’s diffidence and brought out a board and ornate wooden pieces he had carved himself. They played for a long time, the man advising Robert during the first few games before settling into serious play.

  Her head heavy from too much wine, Georgette lay down on her pallet as soon as she had finished helping to clear the table after dinner. Within minutes, she was asleep. Robert glanced back to smile at her snoring and caught sight of the woman, who was standing at a small window on the far side of the room with a scarf of lacework draped over her hair, reciting a prayer of some kind with her eyes closed. How strange, Robert thought, that she prays standing rather than kneeling, and does not uncover her hair.

  At that moment, the woman opened her eyes and saw Robert observing her.

  ‘Would you, would you care for some more wine, young Robert?’ she asked hastily.

  When Robert demurred, she muttered a goodnight and disappeared behind the curtain, hiding the marital bed.

  Robert’s subsequent distraction lost him that game. To his host’s disappointment, he declined an invitation to play again, claiming weariness. Soon the house was quiet and dark.

  In the morning Georgette woke a little late. Their hosts were not in the house, perhaps out feeding their animals. Robert was lying still on his mattress, staring blankly, lost in thought. She knew him so well; something was troubling him.

  Georgette rose quietly and sat down cross-legged beside him, pulling her blanket around her for warmth. He was looking up at the ceiling of the little farmhouse, his hands linked behind his head.

  ‘What is it, Robert?’ she whispered.

  When he finally replied, he didn’t look at her. It was as if he was talking to himself. ‘They’re Jews.’

  Georgette started. These kind people were of the same creed as the hordes that shouted sweet Jesus to his death? She winced as she remembered Gregor’s description of beating Jews the night before he grew ill. He said they had put a curse upon him and indeed he never recovered. But maybe it was cruelly beating a man, a man who looked not too different from their father, which had haunted him. It was the first time he had measured the man behind the Jew, and this was her first time. The measurements didn’t fit.

  They left after a breakfast of bread and cheese in front of an unlit hearth. Their hosts led them directly from the door into the woods, guiding them along what they said was a quick path through the forest to the market road, where passing farmers might offer them a ride. Robert and Georgette followed obediently; it seemed clear that their hosts did not want them to see any of the other people in the village, or perhaps they did not want their neighbours to see their young guests.

  ‘You saved my life. I will always be deeply grateful,’ Robert said when they reached the market road. He looked into the man’s eyes and then those of the woman, and grasped their hands in turn. ‘May God bless you.’

  The woman smiled and turned to Georgette, who blushed and stammered. Looking down, she murmured her thanks again and again, until the woman stopped her with a brief touch on the arm.

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘Off you go, then,’ the man said. ‘May God be with you too.’

  As they turned away, he lifted his hand and Georgette had a wild fear that the heretic was casting a spell on them. But glancing behind her, she saw he was simply waving, and she waved back. Then the two couples turned their backs and walked in opposite directions.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As Robert and Georgette drew closer to her village, she became almost giddy with lo
nging for home, for the sweet scent of a new straw roof, for the sights and sounds of the whole village working together to bring in the wheat harvest. If Bess had not been slaughtered in the fall, would the fat old sow recognise her? She dared not wonder about the health of her father and beloved Father David. She had been away for a year, but she wanted desperately for everything to be unchanged. Yet without Gregor, how could things ever be the same?

  When they were about a mile away, she led Robert off the main track and along the borders between the small fields, taking care not to trespass on the fallow earth as it emerged from winter’s blanket. They zigzagged in a roundabout way until they had circled the village at a distance and arrived at the back of the little hamlet.

  ‘We will be able to reach my father’s house unseen from here,’ Georgette said. ‘So the old crones who sit in the square watching everyone’s business will not send a messenger to my father before I can reach him myself. Perhaps busybodies live to such a ripe old age because the saints dread to welcome their gossiping tongues into the peace of Heaven.’

  Robert grinned. ‘Even in the monastery we had old crones in skirts, but they were male.’

  ‘I used to take this path after Easter Mass or on feast days, not to avoid the gossips but to avoid the young louts who loitered in the square after Mass. They wouldn’t do much to me, but they loved to provoke Gregor into a rage. So I used to tell him I wanted to stretch my legs after the service, and sometimes it would work and he would accompany me.’

  Her voice trembled. The familiar surroundings gave rise to vivid memories of her brother, and she was sick at the thought of telling her father he no longer had a son. Please, God, may I have a father still, she thought.

  Georgette led them behind two houses and paused at the third. The mortar of clay, dung and straw covering the woven strips of wood that made up their walls was crumbling, and she could see the reason. The tree saplings her father had planted where walls joined each other had been allowed to diverge from their slow job of sealing the joint. Upstart side branches were trying to push the walls apart like the arms of blind Samson in the temple of the Philistines. The yard was overgrown with weeds.

  Georgette tidied her skirt and smoothed her hair, but still she hesitated. Robert gave her a gentle push towards the hut. He walked a few yards away and occupied himself with unpacking his bundle.

  Slowly, she opened the door. Sitting in front of the fire with his elbow on the table and his head resting wearily on his hand, was her father. His back was towards the door and clearly he had not heard her enter, for he sat motionless.

  Swallowing, Georgette glanced around. The hut was dirty and unkempt. Her father’s cracked leather working boots lay next to him, although she had always been firm that he and Gregor must remove their boots and leave them at the door so as not to bring the muck of the farm and lanes inside. There was only one lonely salted ham hanging from the rafters, and a string of sausages she herself had smoked shortly before she left. The half-loaf of bread on the table was misshapen and under-baked.

  As a sob caught in her throat, her father heard the sound and turned round. She did not remember that his eyes had been poor, yet he looked at her and squinted, then looked again.

  Slowly, he stood up, a man who was still in his thirties but already old from unrelenting work . . . and the disappearance of his children. Georgette dared not approach him. But he hurried towards her, reached out wonderingly to touch her face, and grabbed her in a tight clasp such as she had never received from him before.

  ‘Georgette, Georgette,’ he cried and she cried too. For a moment they were complete.

  Suddenly, she felt his body stiffen and she knew that he was looking for Gregor behind her.

  ‘I am so sorry, Father. I could not save him,’ she cried. He held her at arm’s length to see her face, his eyes begging for a different outcome.

  ‘He had the ague,’ she sobbed. ‘He coughed blood. I made a physic for him and he drank it. I tried to keep him warm. But in the morning his body was cold. I am so sorry, Father.’

  ‘Aagh,’ he grunted, covering his face with his hands. Apprehensively, Georgette stroked his bent shoulders. Would he blame her? Would the pain be too much for him?

  Her father closed her in his arms again. Together they grieved for the strong, fiery, angry, lost Gregor.

  After a while, Georgette released herself gently. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘God has been good to me. I was alone after Gregor died and He gave me a true friend. I wish to introduce to you my friend, my protector, my . . . betrothed, Robert of the Abbey of Blois.’

  Lifting her voice, she called Robert’s name and bade him enter. Her father turned, his mouth open at her words and at the sight of a young man of indeterminate age – from his face, a youth, but from his demeanour, a man. Georgette was a child. Who could possibly have arranged her betrothal without his permission? But before he could say anything, his words were arrested by Robert’s steady gaze. As if the youth could read his mind, his first words addressed the older man’s consternation.

  ‘I am honoured to meet Georgette’s father, sir. Had these been ordinary times, I would have asked my guardian, the Abbot of Blois, to approach you first and ask your permission that I might have your daughter’s hand in marriage. I pray that you will forgive our unorthodox engagement and bless our union.’

  Georgette’s father measured the youth for a long time and turned to his daughter. The girl’s cheeks were glowing at the words of her chosen. She was a child no more. And the boy, or man, or something different from both, so unusual was he, waited respectfully for her father’s answer.

  Slowly, Georgette’s father took her hands and joined them with the boy’s hands. He lifted his own arms above their heads and said simply, ‘You have my blessing. And thanks be to God for bringing you home safely to me.’

  There were more tears for Gregor, just a few stories about their terrible journey, and some toasting of the betrothal with a sharp, burning liquid from a bottle Georgette’s father had hidden in the house.

  ‘And now, Father,’ Georgette said, her voice shaky with dread. ‘What of Father David. Is he well?’

  ‘My daughter, be strong.’ Her father hesitated. ‘Father David is in Heaven now.’

  Georgette’s eyes widened. She shook her head.

  ‘It was quite soon after you left,’ replied her father. ‘The village women who tended him on his deathbed say he spoke of the Crusade. He said the Crusade was ungodly madness and he should have tried to stop it. But others said that was sacrilege, and he must have gone out of his mind or he would not have said such bad things.’

  The saintly priest had been one of the first victims of the Children’s Crusade. He had seen the truth, and it had killed him. No, she, Georgette, had killed him.

  Georgette cried for a long time, turning first to her father and then to Robert, but there was no comforting her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next day was a hard one. It was impossible to evade the questions of the families of the young Crusaders, so they had to face the harsh duty of telling several parents that their wandering children would never return. One small headstone for Patrice and another for Gregor were placed next to the simple gravestone of the priest. Around all three, Georgette planted the old man’s favourite flowers, pale yellow primroses and mauve loosestrife.

  There was a different service the following day, a simple but sweet wedding for the young couple in the church where she had grown up under the care of the old priest. The bride and groom declined the traditional dancing and gay music after the ceremony, but a hastily baked bridal cake and horns of bride-ale were served in the village square.

  Finally, four days after their arrival in the village, Georgette and Robert departed again, bound for the Abbey of Blois.

  Georgette’s father embraced Robert before they left.

  ‘I don’t want to lose another son,’ he explained as he shamefacedly wiped tears from his face.

  ‘B
ut remember, Father, you are to come and live with us in our home as soon as I have found work,’ said Robert.

  Georgette dashed back into her father’s arms for yet another embrace. ‘I will never abandon you again. Never,’ she pledged.

  A merchant travelling their way made space for the newly-weds in his cart. They carefully positioned the priest’s chest of precious manuscripts. The priest had written a simple will when he became sick, leaving his eight or ten beloved books to Georgette. She knew nothing of their considerable value in gold, but she was overwhelmed by their value in learning. For she and Robert were equally determined that she would continue her own studies, beginning with the wealth she now owned.

  Georgette sat on the cart, her anxiety spoiling the novel ride. Such a learned man will surely find my simple background an unsatisfactory match for his protégé. She became more nervous when they reached the lands owned by the Abbey of Blois, stretching green and vast ahead of them. He is the abbot of a great monastery, and I am but a peasant girl. In another mood, she would have enjoyed the orderliness of the fields, the tall trees, the entrance with its soaring pointed arch. So different from the poor home of my beloved priest.

  Her anxiety was premature. The abbot no longer resided at Blois. He had been summoned from the abbey to Paris, where he was to assist the judges of the standing council in the ecclesiastical court.

  ‘’Tis a great honour for Père Abbé,’ the friendly monk at the door of the monastery told them. He had greeted Robert first formally in Latin, and then affectionately in a simple country French, and he spoke French thereafter for Georgette’s benefit. He insisted on leading them to join the midday repast in the great refectory, where the monks served daily meals to the poor. Now they sat in the huge echoing hall, and many people came up to welcome Robert back and to exclaim at his brief, edited summary of their journey.