Crusade

by Linda Press Wulf

  Robert had told Georgette of the jolly twin cooks who provided a lonely young boy with the only ounce of spoiling he received. Now he asked permission, suddenly shy, to enter the great kitchen and introduce his new wife to them.

  Their host hesitated. ‘They disappeared,’ he said.

  The young couple looked at him blankly.

  The monk glanced around to check if anyone was nearby and leaned closer. ‘We are not supposed to talk about it, but an apprentice cook reported to the abbot that, for a fortnight or longer, the twins had been spending excessive time every day talking with a traveller from the south. A very poor-looking fellow, he reported, ragged and wearing rough wooden shoes. The apprentice said the stranger sometimes read to them from a book written in a dialect similar to ours. Couldn’t have been the Holy Bible because it was not in Latin, but the few words he could catch were about Lord Jesus.’

  The monk glanced around again before continuing.

  ‘The abbot summoned the twins and ordered them to send the stranger packing. A few days later, the twins were gone too. After nigh on twenty years in the kitchen here.’

  The bells rang and the monk hurried off, urging them to hasten lest they be late for prayer.

  ‘What words about Lord Jesus could a stranger offer that would be strong enough to draw two monks from their abbey?’ Georgette mused, turning to Robert.

  But his face was stricken. ‘I wanted to thank them,’ he whispered.

  Georgette was not reluctant to have her meeting with the august personage delayed. But Robert was anxious about the possible effect of Abbot Benedict’s new posting on his own future. They slept at the abbey that night, in separate rooms as was the rule, but left early the next morning to take advantage of a ride to Paris with a farmer who was taking a wagonload of ducks that had been specially ordered for a feast.

  ‘Do they not have a market in the whole city of Paris where they could find ducks more easily?’ Georgette asked.

  ‘Aye,’ the farmer told her as his horse trotted along, ‘but some folks are so rich that they care which breed of ducks they serve their guests. They are willing to pay for the transportation from another place if such birds are not available at the market when they need them. Plus an extra charge I add simply because I’ve discovered they’ll pay it!’ the farmer said with a smile of satisfaction at his business acumen.

  Georgette watched the ducks as they squawked in their wooden crates. Certainly, they were plump and glossily healthy, but could someone really taste the difference between the flesh of one fat duck and another?

  The gates of the city came into view. Georgette whispered a prayer for her brother, who had not been spared to enter the city he so wished to see. She could not believe her luck when the cart passed under the heavy portcullis without a word from the guards. She was inside one of the greatest cities in Christendom. She, little Georgette from the village of Illiers, was in Paris.

  The smell of the city assailed her first. Her nostrils wrinkled at the strong odour of sewage running down the street. And she felt oppressed by the buildings rising steeply on either side of the street, soaring to Heaven yet blocking out that heavenly light. What a great amount of stone must have been quarried to build such towers – enough to leave a black hole in the earth as big as the city.

  The noise frightened her: the clamour of so many voices talking at once. Surely, they could not all hear one another. Probably that was why they shouted, like the fishmonger and the butcher in her village market. No, she did not like the city at all. She clung to Robert’s hand and moved closer to him.

  With a tug on the reins, the cart driver stopped outside a pair of forbidding gates.

  ‘Are we here already?’ she said weakly.

  Robert tried to smile. ‘Apparently so.’

  They carried their bundles, as they had done for so long, and entered the abbey in which, they had been told, Abbot Benedict had made his home. Small by the standards of an abbey in the countryside, it seemed enormous in the city, towering over the neighbouring buildings and surrounded by a wall so thick two men could sleep side by side atop it and not worry about rolling off in the night. If Georgette had not been so wrapped in apprehension, she would have been dazzled by the magnificent stonework, the details of the gargoyles, and the sheer bulk of the building.

  A young monk whom they asked for directions took them down long cloisters, with stonework as adeptly sculpted as any statue, through several courtyards, past a large kitchen, and down a shallow flight of stairs to a series of low openings lining a dark passageway.

  ‘Abbot Benedict lives here, in the furthest one of these meditation cells,’ he said, pointing, ‘although the Lord knows that he could choose to stay in comfortable, warm rooms upstairs. The title of his first sermon at this abbey was “Comfort Weakens the Spirit” and certainly his spirit must have grown stronger in this damp, dark cave. Well, I must return to my duties now. Fare thee well in the name of Christ our Lord.’

  ‘Wait here,’ Robert said, guiding Georgette to a stone bench near the cell. ‘I will first prepare him before I introduce you.’ There was a tension in Robert’s manner that made Georgette more uneasy. Calm, steady Robert, in whose face she had never before seen fear, was nervous and apprehensive.

  With a slight straightening of his shoulders, Robert stood before the last gate and tapped on the bars.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Veni,’ came a cold, clear order in Latin. Robert swung open the gate, ducked his head below the low entryway, and disappeared from Georgette’s view.

  Georgette remembered Father David telling her that the discipline in the monastery where he spent his first years as a priest was so strict that there was only an opening, or at most a gate to each cell, so that the actions of the monk within could be seen by anyone walking by. Georgette could not see from where she sat, but every word was clearly audible to her.

  After a pause, a voice said, ‘Can it be? I cannot see you clearly in the dark and you are not wearing your hood. Robert, is that you? Have you indeed returned safely from your pilgrimage?’

  ‘I have returned, Père Abbé,’ Robert replied shakily.

  Georgette heard a chair pushed back and a few rapid footsteps, then there was another pause and she imagined the youth and the older man embracing.

  ‘Thanks be to our Lord,’ the abbot exclaimed finally. ‘I am shamed that I almost lost faith in God’s will to bring you back to me. When I was summoned to the city, I left word that if you returned, the monks at Blois must send you to join me here in Paris. And so it has happened. Glory be to our Lord. Come and sit here by the fire, Robert.’

  There was a creaking of stools. ‘I am glad to find you well, and congratulate you on the honour accorded to you by the Church,’ Robert said, and Georgette wondered at the formality between the two.

  ‘I am humbled by the trust accorded me by my superiors,’ the abbot replied. ‘But tell me of your travels, boy. Did you see the Lord’s holy city?’

  ‘No, Père Abbé,’ came Robert’s quiet reply. ‘We reached only as far as Marseilles. There, our leader, after promising miracles in the name of the Lord, deserted us, and two merchants deceived a large number of young Crusaders into slavery. Along the way to Marseilles, we met with kindness from villagers who blessed our pilgrimage, but we also saw self-righteous savagery against those not of our faith, which wounded me deeply. Many was the time when I wished for your counsel as I witnessed godlessness on a journey taken in God’s name.’

  There was no reply from Robert’s mentor. After a moment, he began to recite a Hail Mary in a monotone, his beads clicking furiously as he chanted. Another Hail Mary followed, and a third, before he spoke.

  ‘I am sorry for your pain and struggle. I must urge you, though, to accept that the task of spreading the law of God might entail some actions that do not lie comfortably in bed with the soul. Enforcing that law is our highest task and we must not flinch from its execution.’

  There was only s
ilence from Robert, and Georgette understood how such a response must have disappointed him deeply.

  The abbot changed the subject. ‘I will have a cell prepared for you next to mine, my boy. I wish I had known of your arrival. When did you return to our area?’

  ‘Last week,’ Robert replied woodenly. ‘But I spent the first few days in the village of Illiers, where it was my most painful duty to inform several families of the loss of their children. There is much anger there against the leader of our expedition, who disappeared in Marseilles, and many swore to travel to his home village and to hang his father for encouraging him in leading young people to their death.’

  The abbot tried again to return to safer ground. ‘But why did you go to Illiers first, Robert? That is a long detour from the road to our old abbey.’

  Georgette twisted her skirt nervously. Now she would be introduced to the abbot.

  ‘I went to pay my respects to the father of the girl I planned to wed. She is from that village and joined the pilgrimage along with her brother, who died, like many others along the way. Our presence was needed to console the father. And he was consoled indeed by our quiet wedding last Sabbath.’

  ‘Your wedding?’ the abbot repeated in an angry voice. ‘You are married? You, who was to marry the Church, as I did, and to serve only the Lord for ever? I cannot believe what you are saying! For a mere village girl, you have thrown away a brilliant career in the Church. Nay, Robert, tell me that it was a poor jest. Tell me that you are pure still and prepared to rise in the service of the Church as I have planned since your childhood.’

  As Georgette sat frozen with horror, Robert’s voice replied, as level and courteous as he could make it, but firm and cool. ‘My wife waits for your blessing outside your chamber, Père Abbé. I hope we shall not upset her with such lack of welcome.’

  The abbot’s reply was inaudible. Clearly, he was now aware of a larger audience for his words. For a few minutes Georgette heard only sibilant hissing from the abbot, and finally Robert appeared in the doorway. His face was white, but he walked without hesitation towards her and took her hand to lead her inside. When she shrank from entering, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it firmly, and then he drew her inside.

  A tall, skeletal figure sat before the fire, clothed entirely in black, fingering his rosary beads automatically. He said nothing at Georgette’s approach but observed her silently, his face hard and angry. The sockets of his eyes were sunken and dark, as if he habitually slept and ate little. He must have been a refined and handsome man in his youth, but the lack of fat on his bones made his features look sharp and forbidding now.

  Georgette curtsied and kept her eyes lowered, but her cheeks were flushed – not with shame but with anger at the man’s rudeness. Instinctively she steeled herself to show no nervousness or fear of this man. As he had been for many years the teacher and mentor of her husband, she would be respectful in her manner, but she would not be cowed by his fury at her presence here beside Robert. I am the wife of my husband, she told herself. And I was once the pupil of a good priest as learned as any abbot, and apparently many times as kind as this particular one.

  ‘Robert, take your . . . wife to the kitchen and tell the priest in charge there that you are to be given a hot meal and . . . suitable sleeping accommodation. I will talk with you tomorrow morn,’ said the abbot, rising abruptly and turning from them as he moved away to a plain desk and sat down there, his back as rigid as the plank chair.

  ‘Goodnight, Père Abbé,’ Robert said in a low but steady voice, and Georgette forced herself to dip a slight curtsy and turned to follow her husband.

  Silently, they exited the main building and made their way across a raked-sand courtyard to the huge kitchen they had passed only fifteen minutes earlier. But just before entering the kitchen, they turned aside in silent agreement and sat down together on a stone bench in the herb garden.

  ‘I apologise on the abbot’s behalf,’ Robert began, in a stiff voice. Georgette barely recognised his strange way of speaking and his strained white face. This wasn’t the Robert she knew, who was always so confident and open in her company.

  ‘Don’t, my love,’ she burst out, taking his face between his hands. ‘You need not say sorry to me. Indeed, it is I who am sorry for you.’

  Without replying, he turned and buried his head in her shoulder, like a lost child seeking comfort. They sat close together like that for a few minutes, amid the soothing scents of lavender and rosemary, before entering the building.

  PART FOUR

  A Journey of Learning

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Georgette smiled at the funny sight the ducks presented as they stuck their necks between the bars of their cages, bobbed their heads up and down, and quacked angrily at the passers-by. They seemed to feel that, if they protested and scolded their owners loudly enough, they might be returned to freedom. As each chicken, each turkey, and each pigeon at the Friday morning market in the great cobbled square had the same erroneous idea, the air was alive with squalls, honks, clucks and hoots.

  The daily market on the right bank of Paris bore little resemblance to the modest and comparatively seemly gathering that had been termed a market in her home village. Here, fish hawkers thrust their slimy catch boldly near the faces of shoppers, dangling strange creatures of the deep that seemed to leer around the hooks in their mouths. Sweating men carrying impossible loads cursed those who blocked their path in words as salty as any sailor’s. Straw tossed on the ground was clotted with the blood of newly slaughtered carcasses, while a sour smell emanated from rotting produce and the sewerage that flowed undirected along the sides of the narrow alleys.

  Georgette spent almost exactly the amount of money she had planned and rolled the last few coins into a tiny piece of cloth that she tucked down her bosom. She thanked God every day for the impression that a younger Robert had made on the rector of the university years earlier, when the boy had navigated the university’s vast library without assistance. Despite the former Abbot of Blois’ silence on the matter of his former protégé, or perhaps because of it, the rector had accepted Robert into the university on a scholarship. Because Robert was married – a most unusual circumstance among students at the university – and must support a wife, the rector had even arranged for Robert to assist in the library, earning payment just sufficient for the rent of their little room. Georgette’s hours of spinning wool for the shopkeeper on the ground floor brought them a few coins, and with painstaking management, she kept them not richly but quite adequately fed.

  As for the abbot, he had shown no hint of forgiveness or conciliation in the six months they had lived in Paris. Robert had returned to see him, as bidden, on the morning after their arrival, hoping the abbot had come to some measure of acceptance. But the abbot’s anger and passion had grown stronger overnight.

  ‘I can barely believe what you told me yesterday, boy. Word of your ridiculous marriage, your break from the path I set for you, will make me a laughing stock for those who watched me educate and guide you. You cannot do this to me. I demand that you swear before God, right now, that you will have this village wedding annulled, which it is in my power to arrange, and to join the Church in a suitable position, which it is also within my power to arrange.’

  Robert stared at him. ‘My wife is my life, Père Abbé. Without her, I would have died, first in my soul and later in my body.’

  ‘Bah, sentimental nonsense, boy,’ the abbot roared, rising and looming over Robert. ‘I am the one to whom you owe this life of yours. I picked you from the gutter. I saved you from an early grave. You were dust and I gave you form.’

  Then Robert too was on his feet, his face flushed and his eyes flashing. ‘You were my saviour indeed, my teacher and my guide, and I will never forget the enormous debt I owe you. And perhaps some day I will pass on your great favours to an unfortunate youth in need. But when he is grown, I will not, I could not, tell him what he is to be. That he must learn for him
self.’

  ‘Do not dare to talk back to me, boy. If you do not obey me, I will cut you off for ever.’

  There! The threat was spoken. There was silence, broken only by the quick angry breaths of both men.

  Robert spoke quietly, ‘When I told you, Père Abbé, that God had it in His mind that I join the Children’s Crusade, I was right, but not in the way I understood at the time. That terrible journey, which affected me more deeply than you permitted me to share with you last night, was my first glimpse of a long and winding path God intends me to take.

  ‘And without detracting from my gratitude to you, Père Abbé, I follow the path of God.’ Robert bent, took up his cape from the bench, wished the abbot God’s blessings, and left.

  The two had not met since. Georgette did not lament the loss of a powerful sponsor, but she was sad for Robert, who had not been welcomed home as she had. She knew he missed the abbot’s protection, his guidance and experience.

  ‘Brooding old blackbird. His brain got so big that he sacrificed his heart to make space for it. But he cannot get between my husband and me. We share two hearts that beat as one,’ Georgette muttered. ‘I will not darken this beautiful day with thoughts of the abbot.’

  Her basket held fish, a small loaf of bread, a little cheese, two sprigs of tansy for their straw mattress to discourage fleas, and, balancing carefully on the top, a treat: raspberries almost as fat as the ones she used to gather from wild canes at home. Robert loved raspberries, and she had bargained well for them.

  On her way home, after she crossed the bridge to the Île de la Cité and turned into the narrow alley where she and Robert lived, Georgette remembered to cross the road before passing a certain tall house. The neighbour who rented the top floor had a habit of dropping her slops from the upstairs window without a shout of warning.

  Once she reached her own tiny home on the upper floor of a narrow timber house, she placed her purchases on the rough table and began to put the room to rights. Humming, she punched the straw mattress, shook the bed quilt, dusted fluffy ends of wool from her spindle and distaff, swept the floor, spread fresh straw, and scrubbed the table. She arranged the plump and fuzzy raspberries on a perfect, glowing-green oak leaf she had picked on her way from the market – God’s beauty.