Crusade

by Elizabeth Laird

  Perhaps because he’d been forced to keep up with the mounted nobility, Adam hadn’t been absorbed into any of the groups which had formed along the way. The men-atarms, of course, under Hugo de Pomfret, their sergeant, were trained soldiers and marched together, but the mass of squires, servants, grooms, wagon drivers and general hangers-on had quickly sorted themselves into little ‘families’, who ate together and slept close to each other at night. Adam hadn’t been invited to join any of them.

  Until the weather changed he had hardly caught sight of Jennet, but as soon as the rain began he sought her out. She was splashing along cheerfully, holding her skirt up to keep it out of the mud, her dark curls lying flat against her glowing cheeks. She was clearly in the best of spirits, answering the soldiers back when they called out teasingly to her.

  ‘Adam!’ she cried, her face lighting up when she saw him. ‘Where have you been? I never see you.’

  ‘Running after the dogs in the hunt.’ He grinned back at her, relieved to see a friendly smile for once. ‘Wished I was a dog myself. I needed two extra legs these past two weeks.’

  She looked down at the six dogs who were padding quietly beside him.

  ‘They look tired too.’

  ‘They are, poor beasts. But Jenny, how did you get away? I thought they’d never let you come. There aren’t any other women.’

  ‘That’s what you think! There are six of us at least. Most of them are old grandmas. They ride in the wagons most of the time. There’s Susan – she’s come to keep an eye on her husband, and Joan’s son ran off to France years ago. She thinks she’s going to find him. Fat chance. And—’

  ‘Yes, but how did you get round old Margery?’

  ‘Get round her? I didn’t bother. I just hid in a wagon and came.’

  ‘I saw your skirt. I knew it was you. Wasn’t there a fuss when they found you?’

  ‘A bit. Father Jerome went mad. He said all the usual – about Crusaders and purity and women being the work of the devil. But Lord Robert spoke up for me. It was him told me to come, anyway. He just said to everyone he needed a washerwoman and told them to lay off. He’s a real noble, Lord Robert is. He gets his own way. He looks after me. What are you making that face for, Adam? You said yourself I ought to try and come.’

  ‘Not like this,’ he said, trying to look into her face, which she had turned away. ‘Not as Lord Robert’s . . .’

  She tossed her head.

  ‘Much you know about it. I ain’t never been so happy in my life. It’s only a little bit wrong. Father Jerome himself says we got to obey our lords. I’ll confess and be forgiven one day. All our sins will be forgiven anyway, when we reach Jerusalem.’

  He looked down, confused.

  ‘But what if you die now, unconfessed, like Ma?’

  She turned and scowled at him, the rain running down her face.

  ‘Quite finished, have you, mister dog boy? Do you want to stay friends with me? If so, then shut your gob and keep it shut.’

  They walked on in silence for an angry half-hour. Then Jennet gave a sudden scream.

  ‘Adam! There’s something moving! In your bag. Something’s in there and it’s alive!’

  Adam put his hand into the cloth bag which he carried slung over his shoulder and pulled out a wriggling bundle of sand-coloured fur.

  ‘By the Virgin!’ Jennet burst out laughing. ‘It scared me stiff! And it’s only a puppy!’

  ‘He’s a mastiff,’ Adam said, relieved that the tension was over. He was gently pulling at the little dog’s ears. It turned in his arms and snapped at his fingers with sharp teeth. ‘You ought to see his dad. He’d scare off an army. This one’s going to be the same. And you know what, Jenny? He’s mine. My very own. Master Tappe gave him to me. I’ve called him Faithful, because that’s what he’s going to be. Faithful to me.’ His voice was gruff with pride.

  She looked briefly at the puppy, but something ahead caught her attention.

  ‘There it is. That must be Belfort Castle. It’s where we’re sleeping tonight. There’s only one more day’s march after that until we reach the sea.’

  Adam’s first sight of the sea filled him with sick horror. The largest expanse of water he’d ever seen had been the duck pond in the village at home. The heaving, grey, cold mass of the English Channel, stretching endlessly to the bare horizon, terrified him.

  The Fortis Crusaders, already travel-worn, stood silently on the beach, their faces ashen with fear.

  ‘There’s giant animals in there, so I’ve heard,’ a man near Adam said. ‘You have to keep ’em sweet, sing to ’em and suchlike, or they sucks you down into the deep.’

  ‘Look there! Look!’ Adam shouted. Heads swivelled in the direction where he was pointing. A ship had appeared. It was sailing close into the coast, making for the harbour beyond the headland.

  ‘Is that people on it?’ someone said disbelievingly. ‘Must be mad fools. Must be insane, to go on a thing like that.’

  ‘No madder than what we’ll be,’ another said. ‘How else do you think we’re going to cross to France?’

  The wind had veered and the ship lurched as the sails filled.

  ‘God help me! I can’t! God forgive me!’ a young man sobbed. ‘I’m going home!’

  He was backing away from the sea as if afraid that the waves would curl up the beach and lash out to capture him, and now he turned to run away. The old man next to him caught him by the arm.

  ‘Stop that, Dickon! You took the cross, didn’t you? You made a vow. If you drown you’ll go straight to Paradise. Break your vow and hell’s waiting for you.’

  The young man pulled himself free. He didn’t run, but stood shivering, moaning to himself.

  He took the cross. I took the cross, Adam said to himself, trying to make himself feel again the glory of that ecstatic night at Fortis, but the glow had faded.

  Someone further along the beach began to sing ‘Wonderful Jerusalem’ in a quavering voice. Others picked up the familiar tune and moved closer together for solidarity.

  Above the song another voice could be heard, sharp and persuasive. Adam drew in his breath. It couldn’t be, surely – not here, not so far from Fortis?

  He could see now that a huddle of people had collected round a tall, thin man with a close cap on his head, who was holding up a bundle of cords with a pierced cockle shell hanging from each one.

  ‘The shell of St James!’ Jacques was shouting. ‘These charms, blessed by no less a personage than the Bishop of Lincoln himself, will save you, my dear fellow pilgrims, from drowning, from the monsters of the deep and the magic of the mer-people. Oh yes, you, sir, and you, my young friend, even you, old man, you may rest assured of the wonderful, of the miraculous strength, of these marvellous objects, which will protect you from all the perils and dangers of the ocean.’

  He’d leaped on to a large boulder now. Over the heads of the crowd he had caught sight of Adam. One of his eyelids fluttered down and up again in a wink so menacing that Adam took a step backwards, even though he was standing far away.

  People were already pulling their purses out, and a few minutes later, Jacques’s hands were empty, his pockets were full and he had disappeared.

  Jennet came flying down the beach towards Adam.

  ‘I got you one, Adam, a charm,’ she said, flinging the loop of leather cord with its pendant shell round Adam’s neck.

  He wanted to take the thing off and fling it away, but didn’t like to hurt her feelings.

  ‘Why haven’t you got one, Jenny? Didn’t you get one for yourself?’

  ‘No more money,’ she said, looking wistfully after Jacques.

  Adam was touched. He took the shell off and hung it round her own neck.

  ‘You have it. You’ll need it more than me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve got Faithful, haven’t I? Sea monsters wouldn’t dare to tackle him.’

  She laughed and bent down to stroke the puppy, who was now busy investigating a dea
d crab nearby. Faithful bared his teeth and growled, but let her pet him.

  It was late June before the Fortis party was able to embark for France. A week passed before the ships could be hired, and then, when the dreaded sea crossing was about to begin, the wind changed and strengthened, throwing mountainous waves against the harbour wall.

  In the end, the voyage wasn’t as bad as Adam had feared. His eyes had opened wide with amazement when part of the wall of the ship had swung open, and he saw how easily the wagons rolled inside, and how the horses could be stalled as if they were in their stable at home. The ships’ timbers were reassuringly solid, and the sailors, whose Cornish language Adam couldn’t understand, seemed to fear nothing as they raised the sails, pushed off from the land and pulled on mysterious ropes at the captain’s shouted command. He took comfort too from the dogs, who trotted on to the ship with no fear and settled themselves comfortably in the sheltered corner Adam found for them.

  Jennet had been travelling in one of the other ships with the nobility, and Adam was shocked to see, when he met her on the French quayside after the two-day voyage, how pale and ill she looked.

  ‘I haven’t stopped being sick since I set foot on that thing,’ she said, looking back at the ship with loathing. ‘I thought I was going to die.’

  Travelling through France was easier for Adam than the journey across England had been. There was no hunting now. Lord Guy, Lord Robert and the knights had set off at a fast pace as soon as they’d gone ashore, leaving the sergeant, Hugo de Pomfret, to lead the Fortis expedition.

  ‘They’ve gone to meet King Richard,’ Jennet said, her voice reverent at the thought of the King. ‘He’s here already. Lord Guy’s scared we’ll miss him.’

  She’d lost her vitality since Lord Robert had gone. The sea sickness seemed to have lingered. She complained all the time of a queasy stomach, and looked pale and tense. As before, they were covering fifteen miles a day, and sometimes, as the afternoon wore on, Adam had to help her along, carrying her bag and letting her lean on his arm.

  Faithful was growing day by day. His pale coat was no longer so soft, but was increasingly rough to the touch, and the pouchy darker skin around his face was already hanging in loose folds round his massive jaws. He was able to walk with the other dogs now and no longer needed to be carried. He was as good as his name too, trotting always at Adam’s heels, baring his teeth at anyone who came too close.

  He had increased Adam’s popularity. The English travellers, nervous of being in a strange country, where even the houses looked different, told each other fearsome stories of robbers who would murder stragglers for the few groats in their pockets, and companies of bandits who would fall on whole encampments at night. Adam was never without an invitation now to bed down with a group of others and share the contents of their pot. Everyone wanted to have the dogs nearby, especially the mastiff, to bark if danger threatened and scare off attackers.

  To his surprise, Adam found that he was enjoying himself. The atmosphere was cheerful, even carnival-like. The weather was perfect, balmy but not too hot, the day’s march was always easy, along straight roads, and best of all the absence of Lord Guy and the knights had made everyone almost light-headed with a sense of freedom. Few of the travellers had ever in their lives had a rest from the hard toil of serfdom, and no one had been far from home before. They told each other long, rambling stories, sang endless songs, and basked in self-congratulation at their courage and self-sacrifice in going to wrest the True Cross from infidel hands and take back for Christ the city of Jerusalem. Only the thought of the battles to come, and the evil powers of their devilish foes, could dampen their spirits. At night, they would sit around their fires, scaring each other with tales of how fire sparked out from the eyes of Saracens, and how they had tails under their tunics.

  They’d been on the march through France for three weeks when they came at last within sight of Vezelay, the city set on a hill where the kings of Britain and France had met to assemble their vast armies. For days past the Fortis men had been passing through deserted villages, bare fields and trees stripped of fruit. No cattle grazed on the common lands, no chickens pecked round cottage doors and the folds were empty of bleating sheep.

  ‘The country’s sucked dry,’ Adam heard Hugo de Pomfret complain to one of his men. ‘A hundred thousand people living off the land, and for months past – it’s impossible. The villagers hereabouts have hidden everything left to them, if they have anything left, that is.’

  It was clear, when they halted before the gates of Vezelay, that the vast armies had already gone. The wreckage of a huge camp lay on the plain below the towering walls. The earth was beaten flat and hard by thousands of feet and hooves; there were circles of ashes from cooking fires, and here and there, among the heaps of stinking filth, were smashed wagon wheels, discarded worn-out shoes and broken earthenware jars. Their stomachs rumbling, the Fortis expedition looked round in dismay. It had been days since they’d been able to buy food from the villages they had passed, and their own supplies were running low.

  They had been seen. The black hammers that decorated their shields and fluttered from their banners had been recognized by a Fortis knight, who came trotting down through the city gate on his palfrey to meet them on the plain below.

  ‘You’ll camp here tonight,’ he shouted. ‘Make shift as best you can. The kings have gone on to the south. We follow them tomorrow.’

  The Fortis Crusaders, crawling slowly like a giant caterpillar down the high roads of France, had marched through Lyons and, following the course of the river Rhône, were now only a few days away from the great Mediterranean port of Marseilles.

  The fields they’d passed through were already harvested, and grapes hung in heavy clusters in the vineyards. The summer was drawing to an end, but the heat was still too fierce for Englishmen. They marched doggedly on through the hottest hours of the day, not resting till the sun was lower, as the local travellers did. They left their heads bare too, so that the skin peeled off their sunburned noses, and the less hardy among them even collapsed with heatstroke.

  Adam noticed with wonder how, little by little, everything had changed as they’d moved further south. The houses were built in a different way. There were richly decorated, big churches, made of fine carved stone, everywhere. The people here were smaller and darker-skinned, and the food they ate had a strange taste and smell. He noticed something else too. Jacques was keeping up with the Crusader band. He didn’t march with them every day, but appeared from time to time, flitting in and out of the convoy like an evil spirit, charming money out of purses with his trinkets, medicines and false remedies.

  It wasn’t until they were two days’ march away from Marseilles that the truth finally dawned on Adam.

  ‘You’re going to have a baby, Jenny, aren’t you?’ he said, voicing his thought out loud, then flushing with embarrassment.

  They’d been walking silently together up a steep hill and had paused at the top to catch their breath.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered simply, and turned her head away, but he saw her shoulders shake and guessed she was crying.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Lord Robert will look after you,’ he said awkwardly, after a pause. ‘You’ll be all right.’

  She said nothing and didn’t turn round. He took her arm and shook it.

  ‘You’ve told him, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  She spun round, and he noticed for the first time how haggard she’d become. Her face had lost its rosy freshness. It was thinner, and her skin was pale under her sunburn. Even her curls, once so bouncy, lay lank and heavy now over her shoulders.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I would! Go on. Tell me.’

  ‘Well, then. He says it ain’t his. He says I’m a lying slut. He won’t let me come near him no more.’

  Adam stared at her, appalled.

&
nbsp; ‘I don’t think he wanted to turn me off,’ she went on miserably. ‘It was Father Jerome. He came sliding into the tent, in that creepy way he has, while I was telling Lord Robert. Father Jerome’s the only person in the world apart from Lord Guy that Lord Robert’s scared of. If it hadn’t been for Father Jerome, he’d have done all right by me, I know he would.’

  Adam bunched his fists.

  ‘He wouldn’t! I could kill him!’

  Jennet ignored him.

  ‘It was my fault too. I’ve got to admit. And he would have looked after me, but he was scared, like I said, and he just sort of burst out that he hardly knew who I was, I was only the washerwoman and he didn’t know what I was talking about and I was taking liberties. Father Jerome looked at me as if I was mad or something, then he made Lord Robert swear by Our Lady that he’d never laid a finger on me.’

  ‘He’s perjured himself then. He’ll burn for that,’ Adam said savagely.

  ‘Then Father Jerome told me I was a wicked woman, and I ought to be whipped at the cart’s tail and thrown off the Crusade to fend for myself, because I was corrupting the holy mission, and – and polluting everyone.’

  She was crying properly now. Adam looked away, helpless and embarrassed, not knowing how to comfort her.

  ‘They didn’t whip you, though, did they, Jenny?’ he said at last. ‘And they didn’t turn you off. You’re still here.’

  ‘Only because Lord Guy came into the tent where we were and heard. He didn’t believe Lord Robert, I know, because he’s seen us together before. He slashed him across the face with his mailed fist and called him a whole lot of things. And then he said something about atoning for past sins, and I wasn’t to be whipped or cast off, but I was to keep myself to myself, out of the way of everyone, and live decently from now on. Then he gave me a bit of money and sent me away, but when I was outside the tent I heard him yelling at Lord Robert, and Father Jerome going on in that horrible cold way he does.’

  He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, suddenly fierce. ‘Don’t say you warned me. I know you did. Come on. We’d better get walking again if we don’t want to be right at the back with the wagons.’