Pilgrim's War

by Michael Jecks

  At Lothar’s side, Heinnie gave a little chuckle. He was taller than Lothar, but his shoulders were not so broad. With his raggedly cut blond hair blowing free, his blue eyes looked brighter in contrast. He grinned now as Lothar caught his eye. ‘They don’t know how dangerous it is to upset our Count! Never upset a Rhinelander, if you want to keep your—’

  ‘Who, I asked,’ the Count said more loudly. He edged his horse nearer to the three men who stood before the Archbishop’s palace. ‘I would know who instructed you.’

  ‘It was our lord, the Archbishop. He commanded us to hold the gates against you and your men,’ one of the men said. He looked like the sergeant of the group, but although he spoke bravely enough, he was pale and anxious.

  ‘Against us? We do God’s work! We are here to speak with the Jews, to persuade them to accept holy baptism. We are here to save their souls.’

  ‘Like you did at Worms?’ the man said. ‘You robbed the Jews there and slew them.’

  ‘Some were happy to help fund the pilgrimage to Jerusalem,’ the Count said. Lothar and the others could hear his disdain. Some of the men began to chuckle. The Count continued: ‘Now, open the gates! You can tell your Archbishop that you have followed his commands to the best of your ability.’

  The guards did not move. They gripped their spears tightly, and although they were not pointing at Lothar and the Count, neither were the men stepping aside.

  ‘You will get out of my way,’ the Count said, and then leaned forward to shout, ‘because, if you do not, I will have all three of you skinned alive, and have your hides nailed to the gates! Now move!’

  Lothar dropped from his horse. This was no way to enter an Archbishop’s palace, demanding entry at the point of a sword. ‘Guards, you cannot win here. You have done all required of you. There’s no point dying for no reason. Stand aside. We do not seek to despoil your master, only to speak with him.’

  ‘What about?’ the nervous guard said.

  ‘That is between the Count and your master.’

  The guards conferred, but then there came a shout from above.

  ‘Who are you who come and disturb the peace of the holy precinct?’

  Looking up, Lothar saw a man in archbishop’s garb. The man held his shepherd’s crook like a weapon, and his knuckles were as white as his face.

  While Lothar and the others were distracted, a wicket gate opened and the guards slipped inside. Heinnie gave a shout, but he and Lothar were too surprised to move in time. Before they could spring forward the wicket snapped shut. For a moment Lothar expected the gates to swing wide, but then he heard bolts and bars being rammed into place. As he stood muttering a curse under his breath, the voice called again from the gatehouse above.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I am Count Emicho von Flonheim. I represent the pilgrims who march on Jerusalem to rescue the Christians of the city from the cruel oppression of their heathen masters. I call on the Jews of this city to support us in our holy cause.’

  The Archbishop nodded grimly. ‘You mean to rob them. You may not. The Jews of the city are here under my protection.’

  ‘Your protection?’ Emicho spat. He curbed his temper and smiled coolly. ‘Then allow us to speak to them. We march to rescue the Holy Land from the Saracens. The Jews should wish to support us and pay at least a part of our expenses.’

  ‘I will call the Rabbi of the Jews here and you can speak with him.’

  ‘No! Open the gates and allow us to talk to him.’

  ‘My gates are closed to you, Count. We have already heard how your “talk” proceeded at Worms. I will not have murder here. This is a place of God.’

  ‘We will speak with you, Archbishop.’

  ‘From here, yes. But if you attempt to break into my palace, I will have you excommunicated, Count. You will be denied entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, and you will suffer forever at the pleasure of Satan. You will not—’

  ‘Can we not enter if we swear not to harm anyone?’

  ‘Harm no one? I do not believe you, false knight! You would forswear yourself! You would perjure yourself before God!’

  ‘You take a haughty manner, Archbishop! I will swear that all I wish to do is save their souls. If they will submit to baptism, they can leave here freely. I will not harm a Christian. Save them! Let me in for their sake!’

  ‘No, begone! You leave me no option. You say you wish to join the pilgrims to Jerusalem. Go and join them! The way is there,’ the Archbishop said, flinging out his arm.

  ‘Give me the Jews!’

  ‘You will neither enter here nor harm those who are here under my protection!’

  Mainz, Monday 26th May

  The following day, Lothar was bored and walked about the city. To a farmer’s son like him, inactivity was anathema. He made as close an inspection as he could of the walls surrounding the palace. They were much like a castle’s walls, thick and impregnable without the machinery of war, and the Count had no stone-throwing weapons. It would be an impossible task, to break in here.

  There was a small tavern at the side of the wall, and Lothar took a cup of wine there. The keeper was not communicative when Lothar asked about the palace wall and whether there could be a way inside. The fellow shook his head mutely and walked to the dark at the rear of the tavern. Soon the door at the back slammed.

  Lothar was finishing his cup when the tavern owner’s wife appeared. She was a short woman, but her belly was big enough for any glutton. She had a gross, red face, and there was grease on her lips from eating a heavy stew.

  ‘Mistress,’ he said, ducking his head.

  ‘God give you a good day,’ she said. She had a large ham in one hand, a barrel over her other shoulder. While he watched, she set the barrel on a trestle, then reached up and hooked the ham over the fire where the smoke could rise to it, before turning to him and fixing him with a beady eye. It was like being stared at by a crow. ‘You are with the Count, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here to kill the Jews? Some say they deserve it. They’ve done little enough for the town. Sitting in their great houses and making money, while poor folk suffer. What are you going to do if they won’t open the gates?’

  Lothar shrugged. ‘We will have to move on, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s said that the Jews have boxes of gold, each family,’ the women said. She licked her lips like a glutton eyeing a feast. ‘A man could do much with a box of gold.’

  ‘A woman who showed us how to get to the people inside there would be amply rewarded,’ Lothar said. He watched her slyly. Her husband may not wish to help, but this woman was willing, he was sure.

  She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, glancing behind her towards the storeroom before nodding. ‘I can show you.’

  Mainz, Tuesday 27th May

  As dawn broke, Lothar and Heinnie, along with four other well-armed men, slipped into an alley. There was no one in the streets at that time, and the guards inside the palace had no warning as Lothar and the others stepped to the farther end. In the wall was a sturdy wooden door, but it was designed to keep thieves out, not to defend against a determined force of men-at-arms. Lothar carried a long iron bar, and he thrust the lever into the gap between door and jamb. He and another man pressed against it and there was a loud splintering. They moved the bar down, pushed again and, with a loud crack, the door gave way, the lintel rent apart. Lothar kicked at it, and the door shattered into pieces.

  Secrecy now was pointless. They could hear voices, some half-asleep, others bright with alarm. Lothar bellowed, ‘Come! This way!’ and ran across the great courtyard. Two sentries and an elderly Jew were at the gateway, but they were soon dealt with, the Jew struck on the head with a maul while the guards were pushed back with swords at their throats. It was there, at the gatehouse, that Lothar felt it: a shadow, cold as a witch’s kiss, and he shivered as though it was a foreboding of evil. He pulled the bars from their iron staples and slid them from the way, pulling at the gates until they w
ere wide. Outside the Count and the men on foot hurried forward.

  ‘You have done well, Lothar,’ Emicho murmured, leaning down before standing high in his stirrups and shouting: ‘Look! God has opened the gates for us! Today we shall avenge the blood of Christ that was spilled by the Jews. Kill them all!’

  Lothar trotted in behind the main company. He was happy on foot, with his sword in his hand.

  There was no reason why he should feel a premonition of evil. He knew what they were to do here. It was a simple matter of exterminating the Jews. He had been at Speyer, where the bishop had intervened and prevented the Count and his men from killing all the Jews, but at Worms they had achieved their aim and left the bishop’s palace reeking of blood. Here they were to do the same. Lothar felt the edge of his sword. He was his Count’s most trusted servant, after all, and they were doing God’s will. He was sure of it, because Count Emicho had told him so at Worms: the Count had been given a divine message.

  It came to him in a dream, he said. He must gather an army, he was told, and ride to Jerusalem, where he would become Emperor, and thus would begin the End of Days as foretold in the Gospels. Before that, it was said that St Paul would return, and all Jews would be baptised. So the Count had a sacred duty: to convert all the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire; those who would not accept baptism must suffer the consequences.

  It all made sense to Lothar. He was a loyal servant of the Count and was deeply religious, and now he did all he could to hasten the Day of Judgement. First there must be war, and his Count was to bring it about.

  There were already screams and shrieks of terror before Lothar reached the inner courtyard. There he found the Count pulling off his mailed gauntlets, gazing about him at the buildings that encircled the court with the rest of the men, when an elderly priest erupted from a small chapel, his hands held high as he shouted at the men.

  ‘What do you think you are doing in here? This is the Archbishop’s palace! You have no right to be in here! Begone before I call Christ’s vengeance upon you and see you blasted by God’s anger! Begone, I say!’

  ‘Where is the Archbishop?’ the Count demanded. ‘Bring him to me.’

  ‘He is not here.’ The old man’s face cracked into a smile. ‘He escaped with the Rabbi and many of the poor fellows. You think they were foolish enough to wait? You never meant to save their souls, only destroy them all. The Archbishop saw through you as easily as looking through a window!’

  Behind him, Lothar saw the first of the crowd. Men, women and children, some clad in the finest of clothing, others as bedraggled and tatty as the peasants in his own town, but all of them marked out for their race. He felt the stirrings of excitement in his belly.

  ‘Escaped? The Archbishop chose to save the Rabbi?’ Lothar saw the Count stare angrily at the priest before nodding towards Heinnie. There was a flash of steel, and the priest slumped, blood trickling from his temple, where Heinnie’s sword pommel had struck him. There was a moment of silence. The mass of Jews stared at the Count and his men, and an air of expectation enveloped the court. Lothar could feel the blood pounding at his temples, and he felt that he must soon have a headache. There was a hissing in his ears, a tingling in his fingertips, and a fluttering ran up and down his spine, like a rat on tiptoes. A baby cried, and the sound acted on Lothar’s nerves like a knife slowly cutting into his skin. He shuddered.

  ‘Men! Companions! Friends!’ Emicho cried. ‘Kill them. Kill them all, in the name of God!’

  One or two of the Jews had weapons, but nothing that could give a difficulty to the Count’s trained warriors: knives, staffs, a couple of swords, little more. The women were pushed to the rear, while the men stood to the fore with determined expressions, one little more than a boy, others with tears pouring down their faces as the Count’s men drew their swords or hefted axes and spears in their hands, and began to pace forward.

  With a bellow, Lothar sprang forward, sword in his hand, and slashed at a man. It was a poor cut. He felt the drag of the edge as it opened the man’s jaw, and then slit open his tunic and cotte, the blood showing at the fellow’s breast, but then Heinnie was at his side and effortlessly thrusting his sword into the man’s breast. Heinnie gave that little giggle – he always did in a fight – and soon Lothar and he were at it side by side, stamping forward, and with each stamp of their legs they punched out with their swords, impaling the Jews who stood in their path, while other men on either side used axes and daggers to end the squirming of those who fell without dying immediately. Lothar and Heinnie, the two Rhinelanders, always fought together.

  Lothar opened a man’s throat, and had to wipe the spray from his eyes with his gauntleted hand. It was then that he saw there were bodies behind the Jewish men before him. Even as he hacked the limb from the man in front of him and stabbed again, he saw two women, one bearing a child in her arms. The second stabbed the baby in the breast, while the other sobbed, and then the mother was herself put out of her misery, and fell to join her child on the ground. Finally a man went to the remaining woman, embraced her, and pushed a knife into her heart before rejoining the men fighting the Count’s soldiers.

  There was a cold determination in the Jews’ faces now. All that they had valued was lost to them. Their wives, their children, all were gone, and they fought with renewed vigour. One even managed to take a piece from Lothar’s padded jack, nicking his jaw to the bone as he did it. It was an instinctive thing to bring his sword up to hold the man’s blade high, while pushing his dagger into the fellow’s belly and angling it upwards to find the heart, twisting the knife to kill more swiftly. The Jew winced at the pain, and a little frown puckered his brow as though he was surprised to realise he was dying, and then he toppled onto Lothar. Lothar had kicked him away and off his blade, and stood, panting, surveying the courtyard.

  It was a butcher’s scene. All about the Archbishop’s yard there were dead or dying Jews, with an occasional sob or rattle of breath to show where the injured lay. The Count’s men moved among them, ending the lives of the wounded with sweeps of their knives over exposed throats. One was laughing as he stumbled over an outflung limb and fell onto the bodies. Walking over the dead was always difficult, as Lothar knew. Arms and legs would move treacherously, as though the bodies were attempting to make their killers stumble and join them on the ground.

  ‘Why did they do that?’ he said to Heinnie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you see the women? They killed their children, and then each other!’

  ‘What do you expect? They aren’t like us. That’s why they had to be destroyed. They killed Christ. What more can you expect of them? They’re barbarians and heathens.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lothar said, but still it made no sense to him. It troubled him.

  Some had barricaded the doors to a hall, and now screamed abuse at the Count’s men from the safety of their refuge. Although the men tried to hack in through the doors, they were too massive and strong for their axes, and soon the men moved away to find easier targets. In two houses several Jews were found, and the men slaughtered them with no quarter offered.

  It was then that a great cry went up and one of the Count’s men blew three blasts on a horn and, when all were looking at him, he held aloft a cup brimming with wine. ‘Look what the good Archbishop has left for us, to pay us for ridding his palace of this scum!’

  Count Emicho’s soldiers followed him into the storage chambers where barrels of wine and ale stood racked against a wall. Lothar filled his own flask, carefully stoppering it before wandering back outside.

  It remained fixed in his mind, that memory of the two women who had slain the child and then themselves. It was against the natural order of things for women to behave in such a way. Perhaps Heinnie was right. These people were not Christians; they thought differently. But although Lothar knew that the Jews were different, even though he knew that they were cursed because of the way they had crucified Our Lord, the sight of women murdering their own children
was so alien, so abnormal, that it jarred.

  He walked to the yard. The two women still lay there. The child lay back with its chubby mouth wide as though reaching to suckle, while the woman who must surely have been the mother had fallen on her back, her eyes wide. He was sure he could see horror in her face, as though even now she could scarcely believe what she had done, participating in her child’s death. Nearby was the second woman who had killed them both. The man who slew her was not far away.

  Lothar drew the stopper and drank deeply.

  It was late in the night when they had finally broken into the last stronghold of the Jews in the palace grounds. It was a large hall, accessed by one narrow stair that made breaking inside more than usually difficult. Some had taken ladders to try to scale the walls, but the ladders were too short, and most of the men already too drunk to clamber all the way to the roof. Instead, a series of men had attacked the door with axes and steel levers, until at last the timbers gave way and they could enter.

  Inside, they found a slaughterhouse of bodies. Each of the Jews had killed each other and themselves, just like those women. They preferred to die than to be forced to accept the Christians’ faith. The sight shook Lothar. He left that room and returned to the undercroft where the Archbishop’s wine was stored, and he drank a great deal to try to expunge the sight.

  Mainz, Wednesday 28th May

  The next morning Lothar came to with a jerk.

  He was sitting on the floor in the Archbishop’s hall, slumped with his back against the wall, and his hand gripped a large mazer of sycamore chased with silver. Most of the contents were now seeping into his groin where it had spilled. Blearily rising, he drained the cup and stared down at it. Memories were returning gradually, crowding into his mind, and with them came confusion about what he had seen the day before. The scenes were too raw in his mind and would not leave him. He felt tainted.