It was no secret, however, that he was spending much time with the Lady Katherina, just as it was no secret that King Mark was being flowered with the affections of the Lady Christianne Morneau. Yet no one mentioned it publicly. It was not truly forbidden by the establishment for staff and Guests to consort, but it seemed to be discouraged for obvious reasons. Sir Geoffrey did not win any support for Greensprings by wronging his former fiancée, the Lady Amy du Lac. Yet, oddly enough, no one talked about that, either.
Patrick was still learning the nuances of Greensprings etiquette. He didn't know where it was all going, or how long it would last, but he knew that he would be prepared when the time did come. In the meantime, he was going to enjoy it.
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He took long walks with Katherina in the orchards, sat and talked in the gardens, dined with her, and went for afternoon picnics―as was the case today. He sat across from her and studied her closely. She chewed unceremoniously on a honey-spread biscuit, and honey smeared one corner of her mouth. Patrick frowned in puzzlement. How could such a noble lady have such unladylike eating habits?
She wasn't always this way. Obviously, she could be very feminine when she wanted to be, and often used it to her advantage. But sometimes, when she was at ease, she seemed to let down a certain guard and her boyishness shone through. Patrick assumed it was this lack of refinement, this irreverent boldness that he found charming.
“Patrick, what are you staring at?” she asked. “Patrick? Patrick?” She leaned over and shook his shoulder.
He snapped back to attention. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Where do you go when you do that?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“It seems at times that you are, at best, half-there,” she replied. “It looks as if you are in other world. So, where you go?”
Patrick shrugged. “I'm just thinking, I guess.” He picked up a cloth napkin from the picnic basket and wiped the spot of honey from her lip.
She pulled away like a child being cleaned at the dinner table. “What do you think about?”
Patrick shrugged again. “Stuff.”
“Like?”
“Stuff. Things that happened. Things that could happen. Things that could have happened differently if I had done differently. You know, stuff.”
Katherina leaned forward and cradled his face in her hands, her eyes looking into his. Patrick, in his reverie, saw his mother cradling his face in a similar fashion. She was standing before him next to his horse that was saddled and loaded. She seemed so tiny and frail in his arms. Who would have guessed that the woman was so strong? She won’t take you back, Patrick, even if you return wealthy and famous, she said, speaking of Kellie. He had sighed then, as if the last bit of his soul had rattled out of his ribcage.
“Sir Gawain? Patrick? You're doing it again.” Katherina looked concerned. She was stroking his raven-dark hair.
Patrick shook as he snapped out of his daze. He grabbed at Katherina's wrists to keep her from fussing with his hair and held them gently. “I'm sorry,” he said. He started to realize that he was saying, “sorry” often. “I don't mean to be a bad companion.”
“You are not. I just don't understand. Every now and again you have this faraway look in your eyes, and the play of emotions across your face is more...more...” Katherina struggled with the vocabulary, “...vivid. Why?”
Patrick put her wrists down and attempted to stand, but she maneuvered herself onto his knees and pinned them down so that he couldn't. She locked her wrists across the back of his neck. She was delicately built, but she had the ability to manifest her strong will into her limbs and grip.
“You are not going to pace like animal again. I won't let you run away this time. I hate it when you do that.”
Patrick sighed. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because I care. Is that so bad?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“What happened in Eire that was so bad that caused you to leave?”
Patrick swallowed hard. He gathered the little Uhkraani princess in his arms and placed his head against her breast. She unraveled her legs and surrounded Patrick's torso with them while stroking the back of his head. He was a long time in saying anything.
“It was a girl, it was failure, it was hopelessness. It was many things.”
“Tell,” Katherina encouraged.
“I come from a modest house. My father was a knight, and lord of a small estate handed down generation to generation. I have three brothers, all older, all to receive the inheritance before me. I had only the name Gawain as my legacy. I could have stayed at home, working for my eldest brother on the estate, but not as much more than a servant. You see, I had no future in that way. I opted to do what my uncle had done when faced with the same situation when my father took over after my grandfather passed away. I trained underneath him, as did my other brothers, to become knighted. I had dreams of finding my own lands and wealth, as my uncle had done.
“If I had stayed with my family, I'm sure that I would have been treated well, but the idea of never having anything my own irked me. Despite that feeling, I almost fell into that trap. I met a girl. Well, rather, I fell in love with a girl whom I had always known in the village. She was Kellie O'connor. She had eyes bluer than a summer sky, hair darker than midnight, and the face of a Madonna.”
Patrick had withdrawn his face from Katherina's warm bosom to look her in the eyes as he told his tale. He paused momentarily to swallow again. His eyes burned, but no tears spilled.
“I spent two wonderful years with her. She was my first love, my only love. I treated her like a princess, and she almost was in comparison to myself and my family. I thought I did all the right things, said all the right things. She said she loved me, even up to the end.”
“What happened?”
“She found God. She started to spend more time in church than out of it. She took to praying constantly. Even though we were betrothed to be married, she changed her mind. She said that she wanted to join the convent. She said that was where her destiny lay, in marriage to Christ, not to me.
“It was hard at first, but she spoke with such passion about it that I began to see that she indeed wanted this. And it did seem to me that something was missing in her life that I just couldn't fulfill. I thought perhaps that was what she needed. I wanted her to be happy. I didn't want my selfish needs to stand in the way of hers. So I gave her my blessing, and she went to the convent to ready to become a bride of Christ.” His grip on Katherina tightened and his voice was rough in his throat. “But then I learned that she changed her mind again. She met another man, and decided to marry him, and she did.
“I went to her and talked. Asked her why, how this could happen. She told me that we just weren't met to be. She said that she was sorry, that she still loved me, but not as before. She had the audacity to lecture me on the fickle nature of fate as if this all was no consequence whatsoever.”
He fell silent for a while. Katherina watched as the wheels of thought turned in his mind, animating the experience again and again.
“So you left then, for Crusade. To find fortune for yourself, and to be away from Kellie,” she said.
Patrick silently nodded, his eyes still burning. “Yes. I couldn't stand to see her every other day in the village, walking hand in hand with another man, knowing that I couldn't have offered her anything to have prevented it. As I said, I did all that I humanly could have. I knew that it was a matter of time before I saw her with child...his child. I knew that soon that Sean, my eldest brother, would be taking over and ordering me around. I had to leave.
“So, it was an easy decision. Pope Urban had addressed all the Christians to go on the Crusade the previous winter. I left immediately for Flanders, where I heard many of the Frankish princes were gathering to do just that. Adventurers, merchants, common men, nobility, everyone, was going. So I decided to do so, as well. It was hard on my mother in particular. But she knew as well as I that ther
e was no better alternative.
“My reasons weren't entirely material. I thought that perhaps I could become closer to God by taking up this Crusade. I thought I could become a better person. I thought I could find it in myself to truly forgive Kellie like I should, like a good Christian. As it was, hatred and sorrow were consuming me. I needed the journey, so I went to Flanders across the sea from my Green Isle.”
“Did you? Become better Christian? Do you forgive Kellie now?” Katherina persisted.
He was silent for a moment. His mind still turning. “Yes, and no,” he said at last. “I am a better person, even a better Christian, but for completely different reasons than I had expected. As for Kellie O’Connor, I forgive her. I always did. I cannot be so arrogant as to expect life to bend to my will and do as I please. She took the path she had to. But, that knowledge does not lesson the pain any. It still hurts to this day, and always will. I will always love her... and hate her in equal measure. I would like to think that I will always remember the better times rather than the bad. But sometimes I wonder.”
“You said you became better, but not in way you expected.” Katherina let Patrick up. His fidgeting and agitating had finally forced her to relinquish her hold. He now paced on the soft grass.
“Yes, the Crusade changed me...ultimately for the better. But not because it was a Holy Crusade, but because it was a series of events that life threw at me. One can't help but learn from them. Even the bad decisions I made taught me not to make them again.”
“Then why do you dwell on it as if you failed miserably all around?” she asked.
“Because, it wasn't easy. It hurt. It was over three years of pain, discomfort and disenchantment. Like I said with Kellie: knowing doesn't make it hurt any less. It still happened.
“I grew up believing in the Church, in God, in a certain way, and the Crusade shattered all those ideas over time. When I arrived in Flanders, I found a massive rogues’ gallery of misfits looking for a fight. They were uncouth, unclean men looking for any easy out from any crime they had committed in the past against man or God, because that is what Pope Urban promised.
“Certainly there were the true knights of the households of the Princes Bohemund, Godfrey, Tancred, Baldwin, Robert and so forth, but they were in the minority compared to the rabble that followed them in God's name. Raped and pillaged all the way to Jerusalem in that same God's name. In the beginning I didn't know any better. I fell into bad company. The only company that would accept me at first. I was a foreigner, I didn't even speak that much French. They took me under their wing. I stayed with them for the better part of a year. They weren't much better than bandits.
“After Constantinople, we faced the real supposed heathens―the Moslems at the battle of Nicaea, which wasn't much of a battle for me. The Moslems were so overwhelmed by our numbers that they surrendered. Then came the battle of Dorylaeum. That was a battle. I thought more than once that I was going to die. I was covered head to foot in blood and gore. If the Crusade hadn't seemed all that Holy to me at first, it certainly didn't now. It was my first real battle, and I saw my companions commit acts unholy upon those people, even after they had admitted defeat.”
Patrick paused as he paced. Then he knelt and looked into her pale eyes. “Do you know that in our march to Jerusalem, once in the Eastern lands, our foods and supplies came from Moslem merchants? We could kill their soldiers, take their land, rape their women, but it was perfectly all right as well to buy their goods in the marketplaces. They treated us like kings. They were a pleasant people…helpful, friendly...and they bathed and smelled of perfume. They did not smell of dirt and shit like the men I walked among. Their cloth, their armor and weapons, were superior. We bought them as treasures. I wear mine to this day. These were the heathens we were sent to destroy? I was starting to wonder who the barbarians were: us or them.”
Patrick stood and took to pacing again. “It was then that I took note that even our shining leaders, the princes whose offices were supposedly divine, weren't much better than the thugs I traveled with. They took side expeditions to conquer Moslem establishments that had nothing to do with Jerusalem. They just wanted to fill their coffers. While they were doing that, we common soldiers were crossing the desert in high summer. We ran out of water and food because we were once again ill prepared. I thought I was in hell for the longest time, staggering along with parched and cracked lips.
“But then we came upon the city of Antioch, an ancient place that stood between us and Jerusalem. Here I could understand besieging. Here there was food and water. Here was an obstacle to our goal: the Holy Lands. Here were hostile Moslems. I thanked this opportunity for once.”
Patrick ran his hands over his face and through his hair. “I thought too soon. We did not easily win access to the city like we thought we would. It took eight months. Eight months of then wintry weather that killed more of us than the Moslems did. We hid in wet holes in the earth covered by moldy blankets. We subsisted on marsh reeds.
“I asked myself many, many times―why did I stay? To this day I'm not sure. I often wonder what my life would be like if I had left. So many were turning back and returning to Europe.
“I think I stayed because my fear of returning home empty-handed and beaten was more severe than the torment I was then experiencing. I was nothing more than a nobody in Eire, but I still had my pride and I wasn't about to give up. Especially not in the eyes of God. For all the ungodly things that I had seen, I still actually at that point believed that this was all for God. Even if the means were somewhat convoluted.”
He was pacing more furiously and gesturing more wildly with his hands. “Merchants set up camp outside ours. They brought their opium and harlots. Many a Christian fell into temptation there, and they were not ashamed to admit it. These were the chosen, who were to take back the Holy Land? I had long since lost my innocence and naivety, but still held on to certain beliefs. Perhaps I shouldn't have, because it would have made things easier on me spiritually. I could have been numb to the horrors that followed. I could have been jaded.
“Eventually Antioch fell. Just in time for us to be the besieged―an army of Moslems came from Mosul to besiege us inside those very same walls. Many more Crusaders left then to Europe. And still I did not go. I think then that is when I started to slip into insanity. I think perhaps I searched for death as a form of liberation from evil and that the Moslems were bringing it. So I stayed.
“But lo and behold, from the hills came a vision of a saint carrying a holy spear that inspired us to sally forth and defeat our captors. I was then truly insane. Gibbering and talking to a God that did not respond. I fought with valor in that battle, and for that valor I was welcomed into the camp of Godfrey de Bouillon, a Duke of Flanders. He was a good man. It was widely known that he actually came to the East to vanquish the infidels and not for gold alone. It was the happiest moment of my life at the time.
“Even though I never really met Godfrey and was just another knight lost in the ranks, I wore the white surcoat with the red Cross, and I could leave behind the rogues I had traveled with, even though I had become well acquainted with many of them. They were unwholesome, but they had accepted me and stood by my side.
“Even after I had started to hear the rumors that the vision of the saint and the holy spear were a fraud, a theatric to convince the men to fight, I maintained the belief that it was all for God. That I would find an inner voice that would tell me all was well. So I marched with my chin up.
“When we came to Jerusalem at last, we found the Holy City locked up, waiting for us. Our arrival was no secret. They offered us peace and guaranteed safety to all Christian pilgrims and worshippers in the future if we would just leave them alone. But the Franks wanted only unconditional surrender and the Holy City delivered into their hands. So we laid siege to her.
“Forty days we assaulted the walls, and they turned us back. But eventually, during that hot and dusty month, we won entrance. Some of us by dec
eit through the front gate, and some of us victoriously over the walls with Godfrey and Tancred. I was with that group. I was wild eyed, half starved, smudged with blood, soil and soot, and full of what I thought was God. As it turns out, I was just insane.”
Patrick grew silent. He had been recounting his tale to Katherina with full eye contact. But now he once again had slipped off into a faraway stare. His shoulders slumped, he swallowed hard.
They say when one is insane, that all becomes crystal clear within a certain frame...well, I certainly saw with clarity. A vision that was so clear it was painful, yet unreal, like a vivid nightmare. Nightmares have the grace of being just that, nightmares―dreams that are unpleasant, yet not real. I had, however, no such grace.
“After the initial assault into the city I fought hard side by side with my comrades. It was bloody, but it was also glorious as battle can be when you are filled with the lust for it. It is the lust that drives a man to become a career soldier. But once the Moslem soldiers were defeated, I thought we had won and the civilians that ran before us would eventually calm down and accept their new conquerors. But that was not the case. They fled screaming, and with good reason.
“I watched helplessly as my fellow Crusaders butchered civilians only for the sake of butchering them. Because they were there. They chased them down for sport, stabbed women and children, ripped babes from mothers and dashed them against stone walls, forced innocents to jump from windows and walls...” Patrick was swaying back and forth, but he didn’t seem to notice. There was once again a long moment of silence. Katherina tried to hide a grimace. “I didn’t understand. I stood dumbfounded. I had witnessed such behavior from the common rabble, and at first I thought they were the foot soldiers of God doing His unpleasant work to the non-Christians, but that attitude soon passed. The more time I spent in the Eastern lands, the more I came to understand that the Moslems were people like you or I―misguided perhaps in believing in what they believed―but certainly not deserving of this sort of torment. And these were knights and nobles committing these acts. I had been filled with the passion of battle, but not like that.
Echoes of Avalon (Tales of Avalon Book 1) Page 31
