Quest of Hope: A Novel (The Journey of Souls Series)

by C. D. Baker

  He opened his eye with a start. Sins and penance, he groaned inwardly. I’ve yet to know how to save m’lads or Marta from m’wicked past. Oh, dear saints! I’ve truly forfeited all I’ve come for. My soul and theirs may he in greater jeopardy now than when I left! A nervous flutter tickled his empty belly and his mouth went dry. I raised m’arm against the army of the Church! I am a runaway; I have coveted the freedom of the Stedingers, filled my heart with pride; I’ve indulged m’self with joy… Oh wicked man that I am! Surely, I must find a great penance. A grumble from Groot distracted Heinrich from his internal diatribe.

  The captain’s face was turned to the west; his round nose was lifted like that of a hound scenting the air. Heinrich climbed to his feet and followed the captain’s gaze to a menacing bank of clouds mounting in the western horizon. What he did not see, however, was what only a seaworthy Frisian could see. Some distance behind the ship a darting wedge of wind had ruffled the sea’s surface. To port another patch was stirred, then another. A pocket of cold air swelled the sail and the ship lurched a little.

  “All hands tighten the ropes aft! Prepare to set two oars; you, sailor, lend me your back at the rudder.”

  Heinrich sensed something was about. He groaned aloud. “Only one more day to dry land!”

  Groot knew what was coming and within the hour his wooden ship was riding the white-capped sea like a squire tossing atop an unbroken colt. A howling western wind drove hard into the stretching sail while ropes and timbers groaned. Stinging salt water broke over the high bow and crashed atop the struggling crew.

  The sturdy craft heaved and plunged atop the sea all through that afternoon while Heinrich trembled deep in the hold. It was sometime just past dusk when the cloth sail ripped. It split into two ragged pieces and, like the rending of the temple’s holy veil, its cleave changed everything. Cries sounded from the deck and the ship suddenly spun. Groot and his seamen grasped and grunted at the rudder, straining against the mighty waves. Unable to have its bow turned toward the wind, the ship drifted sideways to the storm. Water poured onto its deck and the hold began to fill.

  Heinrich clambered up from his flooding refuge and sprawled on the slippery deck. With only one arm he could do little more than lie helpless and terrified in the darkness. A desperate sailor hollered in his ear, “Follow me!” The baker obeyed and slid on his belly back to the hold.

  “Groot says heave the cargo!” shouted the sailor.

  Heinrich nodded and helped drag bushel after bushel of Cornelis’s precious harvest to the deck above. The man strained and groaned and used his back and legs to help his aching arm lift what he could. He wrestled wooden casks, wicker baskets, carts, and crates to the deck while other hands tossed one after the other into the angry sea. It would prove to be a futile effort.

  The night’s storm redoubled its bluster like a zephyr gone mad. The wind that had formerly only howled now raged with bitter squalls of raw and unyielding malice as if blown from the fearsome lungs of a leviathan. Groot’s ship was quickly filling with water and listing farther with each crashing wave. No human hands could hold the rudder, and the captain finally bellowed to his crew, “The ship is lost! Find a barrel or plank!”

  Heinrich had no time for fear. He could not swim, of course, and knew he was in grave peril. His mind worked quickly. He removed his eye patch and dagger and placed them deep within the satchel he secured over his shoulder. He bound his cloak with a belt and grabbed hold of a wide plank he had secretly prepared for such an unlikely moment. The baker slipped along the tilting deck and followed the sounds of voices until he was huddled with his fellows. A mighty, black wave suddenly lifted and rolled the squat merchant ship high. Then, as if a mighty hand pushed hard from port, the ship tumbled over on its starboard side, plunging all hands into the foaming sea.

  Heinrich held his board with all his strength and sucked a mighty breath of air into his lungs before he disappeared beneath the water. For an awful moment the baker’s world was black and suffocating, strangely quiet and nearly still. The oak was not meant to sink, however, and the man rode it on a vertical shot to the surface. Heinrich’s face broke the water with a gasp. Sputtering in the salty spray and with all the might his arm and legs could muster, he pulled and kicked until his upper body lay draped atop the bobbing board.

  With legs dangling in the cold water, Heinrich peered desperately into the night’s darkness for his fellows. The man strained to hear, but his ears were filled only with the whistling of wind and the wash of water. Unable to do more, he spent the rest of that awful night hanging desperately to his plank.

  By daybreak the wind had eased and a cold rain pelted the flattening sea below. The six men were scattered across a wide area but were within view of one another. In a few hours they managed to kick and paddle their way together. Groot knew he needed to find either a ship or landfall soon, and he strained to see through the cold rain that now washed over them. For hours, the hapless seamen floated aimlessly at the mercy of the sea’s currents until Groot’s ears finally cocked. “Shh.” The six bobbed quietly. “There! Can y’hear it?” A church bell was ringing. “The blessed bells of sext! ‘Tis noontime, lads, and we’re drifting toward land! Tide’s up … that’s good. Now kick and paddle!” His eyes brightened and a huge smile crossed his face. Ahead was a flat ribbon of land, and as the rain eased all could see the spire of a church.

  “Prijzen God?” they cried.

  By midafternoon a rolling tide tumbled the shipwrecked party onto the sandy beach of the large Danish island of Slotshlomen. The men stumbled out of the surf and collapsed, shivering and numb but grateful beyond words to reach land alive. Groot stared toward the distant town. “Heinrich, I’m not sure where we are. Seems like we’d be near to the mouth of the sound. That would make Havn some two days away by land.”

  “Havn?”

  “Aye. Some call it Copenhagen. ‘Tis a good port built on the marshes. The Bishop of Roskilde owns it from the other side. ‘Tis where all Christendom gets its salted herring for Lent! We needs get help in this town, then maybe walk to Havn.”

  “I needs get to Götheborg and winter with the Swede.” Heinrich shivered.

  Groot shook his head. “Nay, sir. I’ll not be going there now. I’ll get m’men to Havn where we’ll ferry our way south, ‘round the islands to Schleswig. Then I’ll needs overland them to home.”

  Heinrich stared blankly. “But, I …” He was exhausted, cold, hungry, and confused.

  “First, y’needs get dry and warm, be fed, and see where we are. And y’needs cover that hole in your face!” Groot roared.

  Heinrich nodded, slowly. He reached into his satchel and put his patch back over his eye. He was relieved to find his dagger safe and he secured it in his belt. He pinched the Laubusbach stone between his finger and his thumb. Then he smiled. “Here.” He offered his fellows a generous portion of the food that Edda had sent with him. The six feasted on his cheese, fish, and salted pork, and in a few moments the company was hurrying toward the belltower of the church.

  Groot’s instincts were correct. His crew had washed ashore at the north end of an island some two or three days’ journey from Copenhagen, and they were now the guests of a hospitable Danish fishing village. The local priest fed the six and led them to a roaring hearth where they sat naked under wool blankets held wide to capture the heat of the snapping blaze. Three weeks later the same priest arranged their transport with a wagonload of sympathetic monks from a monastery in Sweden who were traveling to an outpost in eastern Pomerania, just north of Poland.

  The six were introduced to a Swedish priest, one Father Baltasar, who was escorting the monks. The gracious young father insisted Heinrich and the sailors take positions in the tall wagon while he and his white-robed Carthusian brethren walked alongside the wagon’s solid wheels. Looking over the side at the hooded heads bowed and bobbing beneath him drew Heinrich back to visions of the monks in Villmar. He stared at these men, quite aware that their gesture was
an act of true Christian piety. Amazed and profoundly moved, he was suddenly disturbed by their kindness. He closed his eye and groaned within himself, now certain he had betrayed the good that yet was in the world of his past.

  As promised, the priest and his monks finally delivered the sailors to Havn where they bade a humble farewell. Groot and his men would need to find a ferry back to the Jutland peninsula before marching overland to home. The churchmen, on the other hand, would ferry southeastward to the mainland at Stettin by the mouth of the Oder River near the eastern borders of the German Empire.

  Heinrich had reasoned that he would follow the monks to Stettin and then travel south through the Oder River valley until such time as he might make a move westward toward home. It was a plan counseled by Groot and not without wisdom. Heinrich dared not venture into any of the lands influenced by news from knights returning from Oldenburg, and numbers of them had come from manors all over nearby Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thurungia. Nor did he dare wander farther east into the perilous lands of the Poles. By transversing the Oder Valley he should be safe in between both dangers and hidden in the wilderness until he was far enough south to make his turn.

  The sailors could offer the monks nothing more than their heartfelt thanks. For their part, the brethren seemed genuinely pleased to have served their fellow man. Groot and his companions then turned to Heinrich and embraced him. Each offered him a hearty “Godspeed” and Groot whispered a final word of advice: “Say nothing to the brothers or their priest. Do not tell them of your past… of where you come from, or how you lost your arm and eye. Even the tongue of a good monk can slip … and one slip might surely be your doom. I’ve told them all that they needs know about you.”

  “What did you say?” asked Heinrich.

  “I said you were a pilgrim doing penance. Godspeed, Heinrich. Perhaps we meet again!”

  “But… but, Groot… wait—” With a saddened look to the men that had become so quickly familiar, he waved a final farewell. It was a painful moment for the baker. Though he had known the sailors for only a short time, he had grown close to them. Sharing the terror of the shipwreck and the joy of survival had knit the six together in a way only such a shared adventure can. “Ah, indeed. Perhaps we meet again.”

  It would be several more days before Heinrich finally boarded the ferry with the monks. He had done his best to keep a polite but necessary distance from the priest and the brothers, for he was uneasy about what questions might be posed. “Follow us—we are ready to sail, good pilgrim!” cried Father Baltasar.

  Heinrich drew a deep breath and nodded. “At last,” he grumbled. It was already two days past All Souls’Day and the world had turned gray and cold. He wrapped himself tightly in his cloak as he stepped out from the church that had been his safe haven. He thanked the priests, then followed the silent column of monks through the village streets. In less than a quarter of an hour he stood facing a rough-looking galley filled with sad faces. Heinrich gaped at the eyes peering at him, for though he had heard of slaves before—and even had known a few in Weyer—he had never seen them like this.

  Before him sat tight rows of Slavic pagans, “Lithuanians,” some voice muttered, “else eastern Poles.” Dirty, shivering within their thin wraps, the score of broad-faced men and a handful of women sat chained to the ship’s deck. Heinrich thought of his friends, Telek and Varina, and his heart sagged. Christian knights had captured these Slavs in their campaign into the wild and untamed reaches of the Baltic lands and Poland. The wretches would doubtlessly be sold in the popular slave market of Lübeck.

  The baker followed his hosts along a wide plank joining the dock and the ship, and he stepped onto the smooth planks with a measure of anxiety. A crewman led Heinrich and the clerics past the hapless cargo of souls to a set of benches in the stern.

  Father Baltasar handed the captain a small bag of silver as payment for the passage before sitting next to Heinrich. “So, my son. ‘Tis a chill in the air but the captain promises a smooth sail to Stettin.” The priest had a calming way about him and smiled kindly. Heinrich thought him to be about twenty-five and believed him to be a good and decent man, though somewhat nondescript. He was plain to look at—mild brown eyes, light brown hair, average height, and plain face. It was only his Christian charity that set him apart from other men—that, and a quality of humility that bred an air of quiet confidence.

  Heinrich was hesitant to engage the father in conversation and had hoped to sit amongst the silent brethren without uttering a word for the entire journey. Instead, he smiled self-consciously at the loquacious priest and groaned inwardly. It was not that the priest was unpleasant company. On the contrary, the man was cheerful and intelligent. Heinrich was simply fearful of those reasonable questions any leisurely discussion might present. What if he asks me of m’home … how do I answer him? he wondered. And what of m’arm and eye … and my penance—he’s not yet mentioned it! Ach, dare I lie to a priest? And, by the saints, exactly what did Groot tell him?

  Chaper 21

  ENDLESS GRAY

  The single-sailed galley rolled atop a gentle sea as it pitched and lurched southward toward the northern shore of the continent. The ship was longer than Groot’s and served by eight oarsmen, a slave-master, a master-of-the-deck, and the captain. The crew was Norwegian, all except the brutish slave-master, a Wend from the nearby island of Rügen.

  The captain treated Heinrich and the churchmen well and commanded the ship to a respectful silence whenever the monks conducted their prayers and psalms. The brothers were sober and contemplative. They devoted much of their day to saying the three offices: firstly, the Office of the Day; secondly, the de Beata, which is the Office of Our Lady; and finally the Office of the Dead. They ate only one scanty meal per day and repeatedly declined generous offerings offish or cheese from the ship’s crew. Unlike their Benedictine counterparts, these Carthusians were cleanshaven and their habits were white, not black, though they, too, shaved the crowns of their heads in the tonsure. Their willingness to deny themselves even the most meager of personal comforts made them good candidates to bring the Word to the farthest, most uncomfortable reaches of Christendom. Father Baltasar and his monks were being sent to a new monastery in the marshes of Pomerania near the western borders of pagan Prussia.

  As Heinrich had dreaded from the outset, Baltasar soon launched a series of questions that brought beads of sweat to the baker’s brow despite the biting cold of the Baltic air. He knew he could neither betray the Stedingers nor lie to a priest of God. The poor fellow did his best to elude and evade, but the dual assault of the father’s curiosity and his own pricked conscience made the experience unbearable. Each new probe evoked a more clever hedge, and with each hedge Heinrich felt all the more like Jacob, the great deceiver. He wished the sky would blacken with a mighty tempest; that the sea would roll giant mountains toward them so the flapping jaw beside him would be stilled!

  It was on the third day of Heinrich’s present agony that his verbose companion loosed a bit of news that cornered the simple baker. Father Baltasar did not intend to torment the man so, nor was he aware of the misery that Heinrich now suffered. He was genuinely curious about the stranger and wanted to shepherd the fellow’s soul to good places. So, when he yawned and nonchalantly shared that which Groot had told him, he had no malice.

  Heinrich paled and gripped his seat. Huge streams of sweat ran into his beard and he gulped. “What, father? What did you say?”

  “Ah, my son. It seems you have barely listened to me all this voyage! I said that your friend Groot told me you are a pious man and are on a pilgrimage to Rome to do a great penance. He said that in your humility you wanted others not to know, hence I have been shy to embarrass you with my knowledge of it. Forgive me for mentioning it, but I do wish to be your encourager in this.”

  Heinrich stared at him blankly. Rome? he thought. A penance to the Holy City?

  “My son? Are you listening? Have you heard what I said?”


  Heinrich’s mind whirled; the news was a shock but suddenly became something of an epiphany. Rome? Of course Rome! he thought. Indeed! Other than Jerusalem, ‘tis no better place. There I might truly free our souls… Rome could forgive me, cleanse me, free m’family from judgment, and put me truly on the proper way again.

  “But ‘tis so very far … how would I get there? How long a journey?” Heinrich was mumbling. “Aye? Did you say something, my son?”

  “Nay father, I was talking under m’breath.”

  “Ah. So, again… forgive me but I should like very much to pray for you and am happy beyond words that a freeman like yourself would walk away from temporal things to serve God.”

  Heinrich was barely listening. He fumbled for words. “F-freeman?’

  “Aye!” laughed Baltasar. “Of course, a Stedinger man! Groot also says you are a fine baker … and that your arm and eye were lost when your family perished in a great slaughter by rogue knights in your youth.”

  “He said that?”

  “Ja. Is it so?”

  Heinrich licked his lips. “Groot has a way of … of spinning a tale. He … he makes a big sail of small threads.”

  “Ha! Like a good sailor ought!”

  Heinrich nodded. His tangled mind was churning and he faced the horizon with tight lips and a tense face. The man ached for his sons and a twinge of doubt suddenly brushed against the idea of Rome’s remedy.

  “So tell me about your hopes for Rome.”

  The baker’s mouth was dry and he closed his eye. What to do? he wondered. I am caught in a snare. If I speak against Groot’s word, then suspicion is aroused and more questions. Ach … and there … the crew is listening! They’ll take word of suspicion far and wide.