Beloved Pilgrim

by Christopher Hawthorne Moss

  He came to supper in the hall that night, telling his son and daughter to sit on either side of him at the high table. He waited until the repast was served to talk about his plan.

  “My children, it is a mortal sin to take an innocent life, whatever the reason. It is also a mortal sin to seek to end one’s life deliberately. Your mother and I are both in desperate danger of our immortal souls. I did not want to ease her misery that way, but she pleaded with me with her eyes. It should have been cruel not to do as she wished. But God does not make exceptions.” He saw Elisabeth lean forward to speak and waved her to subsidence. “No, hear me out. His Holiness Pope Urban promised complete absolution for all sins, past, present, and future, if a man or woman would go on his holy crusade to Jerusalem. I did not tell you, but when we laid your mother to rest, I had her heart removed. I will go to Jerusalem. I will take it with me. That is all I can do to expiate both our sins.”

  Elias sat on his right, his head bowed, listening. Albrecht was not far away, standing with a pitcher of wine. Only Elisabeth looked directly into her father’s face.

  Sigismund turned to face Elias. “My son,” he said in a grim voice, “I need you to stay here and protect our interests. You cannot come with me.”

  Elisabeth closed her eyes with relief. When she opened them again, she saw Elias’s stricken look.

  “Not go with you?” he protested.

  Sigismund’s look was severe. “Do not argue with me, son. I am firm on this. You have a future, and you must prepare. Don’t throw your life away on something so nebulous. Stay here and let the steward show you how to maintain our property. You are young, just seventeen, but I know you are worthy. I will knight you before the household fighters and I leave. If God wills it….” He paused in his statement to chuckle darkly at his own use of the crusaders’ motto. “If God wants me to, I will return as soon as I can. Reinhardt will probably come back about the same time. If you have done well, Elias, I will turn the running of this estate over to you. Elisabeth will go with her husband to his estates. I will take my place again in Emperor Henry’s service.”

  Elisabeth finally found her own voice. “When will you go, Father?”

  Her brother asked, “And which route will you take?”

  Sigismund sighed and sat back in his heavy, ornate chair. “The others who crossed the Alps shall have long been in the Holy Land. I cannot catch up to them but must go as directly there as I may. I believe we shall travel overland, east through the Balkans and down into Byzantium. By the time we arrive there, we should be able to get some news about where Eustace and Godfrey of Boulogne are. They may be in Jerusalem already, in which case I will do what I must there, find Reinhardt, and plan to return.”

  He shook his head at his son’s resentful look and put a hand on Elias’s shoulder. “You will have your chance, Elias. There is never any shortage of wars.”

  Elias nodded resignedly.

  OVER THE coming weeks as Sigismund prepared for departure, Elias and Albrecht threw themselves into serving him and his knights. Elisabeth had taken the role of lady of the manor and turned those shaky skills as best she could to help provision the departing company.

  She happened to be in a corridor when Elias came toward her from the far end. They stopped and looked at each other. “There is something wrong about all this,” she stated without explanation.

  Elias shook his head. “I know. I should be going as his squire.”

  Elisabeth frowned at him. “You are so fixed on your grievance, you are not paying attention to what’s going on here.”

  He started to protest, but the truth of her insight struck him. He bowed his head. “You are right. What are you feeling?”

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “I am not sure I can put it into words. I know Father truly does mean to take Mother’s heart to Jerusalem, to ensure that they can be together in heaven, but something tells me Father does not mean to come back.”

  He stared at her, his eyebrows knitted. “But he said he would. Why would he lie?”

  Elisabeth shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t realize it himself.”

  Her brother looked away, as if thinking the problem through. “I don’t see what we can do,” he finally said.

  Elisabeth’s face showed that she agreed.

  THE DAY before Sigismund’s household fighters were to leave for the East, he conducted the ceremony that made his son a knight. After a mass in the church where Elias had spent the night on his knees praying to be worthy, Albrecht dressed him in his finest clothes. They went down to the hall together, Albrecht ever at Elias’s left shoulder.

  Sigismund stood just below the dais, dressed in his own finest and holding a naked sword. Elisabeth stood beside him. Father Boniface waited until Elias knelt before his father and Albrecht stepped back to a respectful distance. Elisabeth glanced at Albrecht, seeing the pride shining in his eyes as he looked at Elias’s kneeling figure. She smiled. Father Boniface intoned a blessing and then retreated.

  Sigismund looked down at his son’s bowed head. “Elias, my son, I have ever been proud of you. Even though my many long absences have deprived you of some of what you deserved in your young life, you stayed stalwart, patient, and virtuous. You stood by your dear mother throughout it all. That is indeed the character of a true knight.”

  He raised the naked blade and performed the ritual of knighting in silence. He had tears in his eyes. When he was finished, he bade Elias stand. Somberly holding up the sword with the pommel toward his son, he proclaimed, “Take your sword, sir knight, and see to it you wield it in honor and justice.”

  Elisabeth heard the priest’s quiet “Amen.” She watched as Elias took the sword, kissed the place where hilt met blade to create a cruciform, and then slowly slipped it into the empty scabbard at his side. He struck his heels together and bowed to his father. Albrecht stepped to him and draped a mantle about his shoulders. Elias stood, dignified, handsome, and magnificent.

  One final feast marked the occasion and the departure of most of the fighting men at Winterkirche. It was a somber affair, so much grief part of all the decisions that had been made.

  IN THE early morning, much the same group of people assembled in the courtyard. Sigismund sat his destrier, watching the servants carry a richly decorated casket containing the late Adalberta’s heart to a cart and lay it carefully within. Father Boniface pronounced a blessing over the casket and then turned to do the same for the mounted company.

  Sigismund looked at his son and daughter where they stood on the steps to the hall. “God bless you and keep you, my children.”

  Elias lifted his chin and assured, “I shall not disappoint you, my father.”

  “I know you shall not” was all his father could say in reply. He turned his eyes to rest on Elisabeth. “I… I….” His voice broke on a suppressed sob.

  “I know, Father. I know,” she replied.

  THEY DID not know what to expect in the way of tidings from their father. Whenever a traveler passed through their lands, they invited him in to learn whatever they could about what transpired in the world. There was little news of either the crusade in Palestine or their father and his party.

  Elias found himself sternly summoned to Emperor Henry’s court. When he returned, he told Elisabeth the emperor had angrily inquired why Sigismund had gone without seeking his leave beforehand. Elias was at a loss to explain, other than to say that his father assumed the earlier blessing was in force. He was asked to and gladly agreed to swear his own fealty to Henry, though the man seemed less than confident in a knight so young. In fact, he seemed reluctant to believe the boy had, in fact, been knighted.

  Albrecht learned from other squires that the emperor was angry that so many of his best knights and barons had chosen to go on crusade, leaving him in an uneasy situation. Nevertheless, he could not refuse them leave and still avoid the wrath of the Church. His stance with Pope Urban was shaky as it was from his years of opposing the Holy See.

  In the mean
time, Elias spent his days with the manor steward, learning what he needed to know to maintain the estates. He continued to work with the sword master, Dagobert, having now graduated to real weapons. In what time was available, he surrendered to his sister’s demands and showed her what he learned. She and Albrecht spent time practicing.

  Feeling suspended, Elisabeth returned to Magdalena’s cottage time and again. She found the older woman’s simple, quiet acceptance of her moods healing. Magdalena never tried to change how Elisabeth felt, what she felt, but simply listened to her frustrations, her fears, and her grief. Elisabeth, after so much abandonment, needed the one sure thing, her friendship.

  Not that Elisabeth did not seek advice and reassurance. Some days she fired a barrage of questions and challenges at Magdalena.

  “What if Elias leaves? What do I do if Reinhardt comes back? What do I do if my father never returns? Why must I remain when they all leave?”

  Magdalena’s sole response to all these questions was, “You will do what you will do when the time comes.”

  Some news began to trickle in, but it was months old by the time it reached Bavaria. There was nothing about Sigismund and his party, but they learned that in the fall of 1097, the European forces under Eustace and Godfrey of Boulogne had arrived at the great city of Antioch. Other nobles, including the Norman giant Bohemond and Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse, had joined them in Constantinople. The last anyone knew was that they were besieging Antioch, with no hope in sight of breaching the massive walls.

  Elisabeth gaped when she heard that Bohemond, the scion of the Norman Guiscard dynasty in southern Italy, was in effect the real leader of the crusader armies. He was notorious for being the sword arm of his late father in trying to wrest control of Byzantium. “And the Byzantine emperor agreed?” she asked, astonished.

  The traveling priest who brought this news shrugged. “It seems so. He is a masterful leader of men.”

  IT WAS summer of the year 1100 when Elias asked his sister to come with him to the church where their mother’s body, if not her heart, was entombed.

  Her brother turned to Elisabeth, taking her hands in his. He glanced at Albrecht, nodded, and then turned back. “Liesl, Albrecht and I are going to go to the Holy Land to look for Father and to pray for him and Mother at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.”

  Elisabeth stepped back involuntarily, pulling her hands out of his. With her fingertips to her lips, she exclaimed, “No! You can’t!”

  Elias’s beautiful countenance showed his regret as he glanced over at Albrecht. “We have to go. Otherwise we will all just sit around here and wonder what happened to Father. And you know I can’t claim lordship here if we don’t know if Father is alive. What would Reinhardt do in that case? I hate to speculate. We have to do something so we at least know what we are dealing with.”

  “Well, if you must go, take me with you!” she said sharply, putting her arms tight around her own small breasts.

  Her brother arched his eyebrows. “Believe me, I thought about just that. But, no, it is not a safe place for a woman of your station.”

  She glanced from Elias to his squire and then back. “I can fight. You know I can,” she retorted.

  The indulgent look that drove her mad was on his face. “You can also be captured, raped, and held for ransom.”

  It was not the response she had expected. She was not prepared to counter the assertion with any intelligence. Instead, she said lamely, “Great ladies go to the Holy Land all the time.”

  “Name one,” Elias said, simply and firmly.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but no names came to her. She supposed there must be women of rank who made the pilgrimage, but even had she thought of one, she knew all that had ended when the crusaders brought open war to the Holy Land.

  Her brother watched her face as she struggled with finding a reason he should take her with him. “I will make sure you are well protected here. You won’t be alone. And I need you to look after Winterkirche while we are gone.”

  The word “we” caused her to shoot a furious glare at Albrecht. She wanted to snap something about their just wanting to be alone together, but she knew that was unfair and turned back to Elias. “Don’t patronize me, Elias. You know better than that.” She turned and hurried to the hall.

  THAT EVENING by the hearth fire she asked, in a quiet voice “When will you leave?”

  Elias said, “We will want to get over the Alps by the time real winter sets in. So sometime before Michaelmas.”

  Only two months. She groaned inwardly. “But the fighting may be over by the time you get to Jerusalem.”

  He shrugged. “I guess we will see. Little word has made it here. If they are still fighting, we shall join in. If they have taken Jerusalem by now, we will be there to help keep it safe.”

  Looking with trepidation between the two boys’ faces, Elisabeth said, “You mean to stay there, then?” She caught the look they gave each other. “You do! Damn you, Elias, you don’t mean to come back!”

  He and his squire looked down at their hands. He mumbled, “We don’t really know. We have not planned that far.”

  Elisabeth, still standing, glared at her brother. Slowly, her face softened. “There is no longer anything here for you… except wealth and estates…,” she added acidly.

  Elias frowned at her. She shook her head, resigned, and took a seat on a stool. “I know, I know.” Her thoughts turned to her husband. Perhaps he was already dead. In that case, she would stay on here and grow happily old alone, the mad widow of Winterkirche. The thought almost brought a smile to her lips.

  Elias raised one arm and drew it across his forehead. “Lord Jesus, it’s stifling in here.”

  ELISABETH LISTLESSLY moped about the manor. She tried to smile and encourage the young men as they prepared to leave for the Brenner Pass and Italy, but try as she might, she could not fight against her growing dread.

  “Elias, rest a bit. You have servants who can do all this,” she said to him one morning as she found him with Albrecht in his own chamber. She tried not to notice the rumpled bed, the lack of a squire’s pallet on the floor. She wondered what the servants made of it, if they noticed.

  “She is right, my lord,” Albrecht inserted. “You are tiring yourself out. Look at you—it’s just an hour since sunup, and you are already starting to drag.”

  Elias started to argue but subsided, putting down the gauntlet he was testing for loose screws. He yawned. “I don’t know what has come over me. I’ll lie down for a while now.” He looked over at Albrecht. “Will you come back and sit with me?”

  Elisabeth stood quickly, and after a rushed comment to Elias, followed the squire out into the corridor. “Albrecht, wait a minute!” she called.

  She reached him and put her hand on his arm. “You are worried about something, something to do with Elias. What is it?” she asked. “When you said he should rest, there was a look in your eye. Like you were worried.”

  Albrecht said, “He has seemed pinched, tired. That’s all. I just hope he is not becoming ill.”

  “Ill?” she repeated. “Dear God, I do hope not.”

  Only days later, she happened to pass through the corridor as Elias came out of an alcove that was used as a privy at night. He stood outside it, shaking. His face was suffused with sweat.

  “Oh my God, Elias!” she cried as she rushed to him. She took his arm and led him to his chamber.

  “Where is Albrecht? Send for him,” he rasped as she helped him lie back on his bed. “Hurry.”

  She went to his door and hailed a passing servant, then returned to Elias’s bedside and reached for the ewer of water on the table next to it and the cloth that lay beside it. She poured water into a large bowl and soaked the cloth, squeezed it out, and leaned to her brother.

  He weakly took her extended wrist and asked, “Did you send for Albrecht?”

  “I did. They will bring wine and more cloths, and he will come.”

  Frowni
ng, he released her wrist, letting her wipe the sweat from his face.

  “You are ill. We were afraid of that.”

  He looked at her. “We? You and the servants?”

  “Albrecht and I,” she responded.

  At that moment, the squire came into the chamber in a rush. He went to the side of the bed opposite Elisabeth and sat. “My lord, are you well? What is wrong?”

  Elias reached for his hand. “I am sick. I am feverish and I just vomited up more food than I even ate this morning.” He grimaced. “And it is coming out the other end too.”

  Albrecht watched Elias’s hand cover his own, sighed, and let him hold it. “Oh, Elias.” He did not bother to say the formal “my lord.”

  Elisabeth looked at them both. How sad it must be, she thought to herself, to have someone who loves and cares for you, but you can’t let anyone see it. She stood and said aloud, “I will go for a tisane that will help you sweat out the fever.”

  Elias stopped her. “Albrecht, can you go get it? I want to talk to my sister.”

  The squire glanced from one twin to the other, then nodded and went out.

  “Elisabeth, I know you know… about Albrecht and me,” Elias said in a hesitant voice.

  She nodded. “You know I do.”

  He glanced away and asked, “Do you hate me?”

  “Of course not! How can you ask that?”

  He looked back with a grim smile. “I haven’t always been sure. You said so once, but sometimes you looked at us with such anger.”

  She put her hands to her face. “Oh my God, I am so sorry. There were some times when I was confused or jealous. But Magdalena told me that you love each other, like Father and Mother. I am glad you have had someone to love like that. That you do have someone to love.” She looked quizzically at him. “You don’t think you are going to die, do you?”

  He made his voice joking. “No, I don’t. It’s just so much fun to get a rise out of you.”