The Source: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  When the little ones were assembled, Abd Umar said in Greek, “Now let each child go to his true-born parents and let each father and mother certify that this child was born of his body.” The children scattered to the arms of mothers, who clutched them hungrily, but some fourteen were left standing alone, the orphans of the town.

  Abd Umar now dismounted and walked among the fourteen as if they were his sons and daughters. Of each one he asked, “Where is your father,” and when none could reply he said, “These children are from this moment the children of Allah, for Muhammad has said that all children are born in our faith. It is only their parents who lead them astray.” And he kissed the children, one by one, and they were his.

  The last child he embraced was Jewish, with a Jewish name, and Abd Umar asked, “Where are the Jews of this town? What is their decision?”

  The fumbling rabbi stepped forward to say that the Jews offered their submission. They would pay the tax but would keep to their faith. At this Abd Umar asked, “Are there none among you to join us?” Silence. “I was raised by a Jew. Ben Hadad of Medina, a merchant. It is a newer and a better faith that I bring you. Will none join?” Again silence, and he said no more, for he had not expected the Jews to convert, but as he was about to remount he thought that one Jewish woman, prettier than the others, had started to make a motion as if she were inclined to join the conquerors. If that was her intention it was forestalled by the rabbi, who looked commandingly at her, so that she said nothing. Had a soldier witnessed this apparent interference he would have killed the rabbi, but Abd Umar, hoping to avoid bloodshed, thought: That problem we can deal with later.

  Mounting his horse he uttered a series of short commands directing the various priests to take to themselves all members of their congregations, and the rabbi to do the same with his Jews. When this maneuver was completed he rode to the small body of pagans left standing unclaimed and shouted, “You, each of you. Do you not belong to the people of the Book?” The pagans remained surly, some staring defiance, some looking at the ground. To the first in line Abd Umar rode, asking in a loud voice, “You? Do you in this instant accept Islam?” The man hesitated, trembled, replied that he remained faithful to the fire gods of Persia. Before he had completed his sentence he was killed from behind, a powerful sword slicing through his neck until his head toppled sideways before his body fell.

  Ignoring the corpse Abd Umar rode to the next pagan, a tall Negro from Sudan, and allotted him five seconds to determine his future, but this man also held fast to his own god—in this case Serapis—and Arab foot soldiers were about to kill him when Abd Umar interceded. Reining in his horse before the Negro he said, “I am dark like you, and the Prophet found a place for me. Join us.”

  The tall Negro, appreciating what must follow, answered, “I am faithful to Serapis,” and Abd Umar looked aside as he was struck down.

  But the third pagan he approached was a member of the great Family of Ur, and although this man had clung to Baal through many former vicissitudes, it now required him less than one second to decide in favor of the new religion. “I accept the Prophet!” the man of Ur called out in a clear voice, and the warmth with which he was received by the Arabs encouraged the remaining pagans to accept Islam. As they knelt to do so the man of Ur stood aside at a spot from which he could see both the basilica where Baal lay buried and the top of the mountain where he reigned, and he reassured himself: It won’t be any more difficult under the Arabs than it was under the Byzantines.

  That day Abd Umar was required to kill only two pagans, and when the rest had completed their conversion and he realized how simple the conquest of Palestine was to be, he spurred his horse toward the western part of town, from which he looked across the fields to the distant walls of Akka. How dazzling the sea-girt city was that cold afternoon, gleaming in the late sun, its many towers pointing downward to the riches that awaited the conqueror. Abd Umar smiled. Capturing that city would be as easy as taking Makor, for the same savage divisions could be depended upon to paralyze the Christians, while ritual-bound Jews could provide no leadership. “An empire is falling apart!” he cried. “And we ride in to gather up the pieces.”

  Now at last he could visualize the specific steps beyond Akka: the voyages across that sea out there, the battles in lands whose names he did not know, his swift rise to general and the extension of his faith until it encompassed half the known world. No man before had ever stood on the mound of Makor faced by such a boundless horizon, not even the young Herod who was to accomplish so much, and the ex-slave breathed deeply of the sea air. His experiment had succeeded; he had taken Makor by compassion, and he whispered to himself, “The killing has ended. The fires have gone out and we have a world to win merely by leading our horses up to the city walls.”

  Saluting the waiting gates of Akka, Abd Umar wheeled his horse back toward the center of town, and as he did so he happened to see, standing by the dye vats, the Jewish widow Shimrith, afraid to enter her own home because her brother-in-law lurked there. The Arab captain, recognizing her as the pretty woman whose indecision he had witnessed, dismounted.

  LEVEL

  V

  Volkmar

  Headstone carved from native limestone by guildsmen from Genoa working at St. Jean d’Acre, 1124 C.E., under orders from Count Volkmar II, who thus honored his father. (Here lies Volkmar of Gretz, whose soul rest in peace amen.) Stone put into place at Ma Coeur, December 21, 1124 C.E., nineteen years after the count’s death. Deposited in the ruins May 17, 1291.

  Shortly before dawn on Thursday morning, April 24, 1096, the priest Wenzel hurried to his master’s room in the castle of Gretz and banged on the door. Inside, the sleepy count merely growled, but repeated knocking roused him from his sleep and at last he grudgingly threw open the iron-studded door.

  “Now what?” he grumbled. He was a stalwart man with thick shoulders, heavy neck and sandy-red hair. Although he was nearing fifty he appeared to be in his early forties, and his nightrobe showed hairy legs and big feet to match his capable hands projecting awkwardly from lace wristlets.

  “Sir!” the gray-haired priest cried in joyous excitement. “They’re coming!”

  “Who?” the sleepy count demanded.

  “The ones I told you about.”

  “The rabble?”

  “I didn’t call them that.”

  “If they’re rabble, why wake me?”

  “You should see them, sir. They’re a miracle.”

  “You go back to bed,” the drowsy count ordered, “and I’ll do the same.” But as he spoke he heard in the morning air a rustle. It sounded like the waves of the sea against his boat when he was returning from the war in Sicily, and as he listened it grew. A rooster crowed, dogs began barking and he heard the sound of feet running through the narrow streets of his city. And then he heard the sound itself, outside the walls: a rushing of many bodies, the soft swirling of dust and the slow creaking of wagons drawn not by horses but by men.

  “What is it?” he asked his priest.

  “The ones from Cologne,” Wenzel replied.

  “I’d better see them,” the count surrendered, and while the priest watched he threw off his robe, revealing a powerful, hairy body, and slipped into his woolen clothes, ending with a pair of rough leather boots. The priest led him through the chapel and onto a battlement from which they could see below them, coming up the road that led from Cologne to Mainz, a huge collection of moving objects not fully discernible in the dawning light.

  “What’s that in front?” Count Volkmar asked.

  “Children,” the priest answered. “They run ahead from town to town, but they don’t belong.”

  Volkmar leaned against the battlement and watched in amazement as through the dust raised by the scrambling children came file after file of men and women, undisciplined and unarmed. They moved through the cold early light like ghosts, their eyes transfixed and their feet shuffling with no apparent purpose but with a constant forward impulse. Vol
kmar cast his eyes backward along the interminable lines until the marchers were lost in dust.

  “How many?” he asked his priest.

  “At Cologne they estimated twenty thousand.”

  “They have no arms! No knights!”

  “They propose to have none,” Wenzel replied. “They say that with God’s aid they will conquer.”

  Volkmar stood silent in the face of this strange army, marching forward as no other had done in the remembered history of the Rhine. Men and women loomed out of the darkness, shuffled silently past and others took their places. At times the procession was modified by clusters of wagons drawn by men or miserable horses, and each vehicle was piled with bags of clothing or remnants of food. On some, babies rode or old women, while in the wake marched a group of children much different from the wild ones who led the procession. These were tired. They had been marching for many days and no longer found energy for play or make-believe.

  “Are those children …” Count Volkmar didn’t know how to finish his sentence.

  “Those are the ones who belong,” the priest explained.

  “They look starved,” Volkmar grumbled.

  “They are.”

  The count made a hasty decision. “Wenzel, when they enter the city, see that the children are fed.”

  “They’re not stopping here, sir,” the priest told him, and Volkmar looked toward the head of the procession and saw that this was correct. The gates of the city were closed and the marchers were heading silently toward Mainz.

  “Stop them!” the count ordered, and he dashed back into the castle to alert his wife and children so that they could see the amazing sight.

  Wenzel, a thin man nearing sixty, hurried through the city, calling for the watchmen to open the city gates, and when the huge iron hinges had creaked in their sockets and the wooden slabs had swung aside, the priest moved into the midst of the marchers, waving his arms. The first part of the procession paid no heed, and passed on, but the marchers in the middle area saw the priest and came slowly to a halt. As they did so Count Volkmar and his wife, accompanied by a son and daughter in their teens, came purposefully through the gate, dressed in the fine garb of city dwellers. In a loud voice Volkmar announced, “We will feed all children.”

  The crowd cheered and mothers began shoving forward twice the number of children Volkmar had anticipated, until more than a thousand were clustered about the gates of Gretz. Matwilda, the count’s pretty wife, was touched by the obvious hunger showing in the little faces and bent down to talk with some of the older girls, but they spoke no German.

  “Can we feed so many?” the priest inquired.

  “Feed them,” the count snapped, and men inside the city were summoned to bring out what food could be made quickly available. Volkmar tried to speak with the younger children but found that they also knew no German.

  As he knelt to question one small boy he saw for the first time, sewed onto the shoulder of the child’s blouse, a pair of rudely cut strips of red cloth put together to make a cross. Pointing to the emblem he asked Wenzel, “Is this it?”

  “Yes,” the priest replied, and Volkmar looked about him to find that most of the crowd pressing upon him were similarly decorated. The cross was usually small, the cloth ragged and of many colors, but the effect was impressive.

  Count Volkmar was about to query a husband and wife regarding their insignia, when there came a shouting from the rear and the motley crowd opened a path for someone of apparent importance. It was a scrawny priest riding barefoot on a gray donkey. The little man had piercing eyes, sunken cheeks and matted hair. He wore a dirty black robe over which he had thrown a brown surplice lacking sleeves but marked with a flaming cross in red. Sensing from experience that Volkmar was the essential man in Gretz, the little priest kicked his donkey and rode directly to the count, crying in a cracked voice, “God wills it! You are to ride with us, for your salvation is in the balance.”

  Suspiciously Volkmar asked his own priest, “Does this one represent the False Pope?”

  “Yes,” Wenzel nodded.

  “Get away from me,” Volkmar cried, drawing back from the man on the donkey.

  “God wills it!” the little priest shouted, urging his tired animal forward.

  The big German knight looked down at the inconsequential rider and said scornfully, “You serve the False Pope.”

  “But the true God, and He commands you to ride with us.”

  Not only did Volkmar refuse to ride with this rabble; he was sorry that he had volunteered to feed the children who now pressed in from all sides. If the little man on the donkey were indeed a servant of the False Pope it could be embarrassing for the Count of Gretz to be caught assisting him, and he seriously considered canceling the order so as not to implicate himself. But at this moment events were swept out of his hands, for from the gates of his city a mob of his town folk began rushing out to greet the little priest.

  “Peter! Peter!” they shouted as one wave after another crowded to touch his robe or to caress the donkey. Some tried to pull hairs from the beast’s coat, but these were driven back by men protecting the priest.

  “It is God’s will,” the priest shrieked in his high, cracked voice. He was a thin wisp of a man, about forty-five years old, driven by some tremendous inner compulsion which flashed in his eyes. “I have been sent to call you to your duty.”

  The people of Gretz listened in wonder as he told them that they could be saved from the impending end of the world only if they marched with him. Listening to his wild words Count Volkmar became more convinced that the man must be avoided, and he led his family back through the ranks of his own townsmen until he was safe within the city wall. “Let none of that mob enter Gretz,” he commanded the guards.

  His bailiff now came up. “Sir, if you want food for all those children you’ll have to give me extra money.” Volkmar considered this for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “We said we’d feed them,” he replied with no enthusiasm. He left the gate, where the children were making a fearful noise, and retreated in some confusion to his castle, from which he continued to look down on the growing mob. “There’s a lot more than twenty thousand people down there,” he told his wife, after which he prudently summoned the captain of his guard and instructed him: “Without attracting attention, close the gates, and if any should try to force entrance your bowmen are to shoot them down.” It would not be said of him that he had trafficked with the False Pope.

  Since food had already appeared, the pilgrims did not protest when the gates swung shut. Posterns were opened through which more food was passed, and finally the feeding of the children was completed. Parents, obviously starved, were allowed to grab the last scraps, while the cooks—looking over their shoulders lest the count see them—passed bundles of food to the little priest and his immediate entourage, whereupon the great mass started to move slowly onward toward the towns of Mainz and Worms and Speyer.

  “It’s surprising how well the little priest maintains order,” Volkmar said grudgingly to his wife as they watched the dusty mob move off, but Matwilda uttered a sharp cry when the carts bearing families appeared at the rear of the procession, for she could see the privation under which the women and babies attached to this congregation moved. Surrounded by scrawny cattle, only a few of which were giving milk, these unfortunates lived in dust and danger.

  “I’m sorry for them,” she sighed. “They shouldn’t be attempting such a journey.”

  “Damn!” her husband shouted. “Who’s that at the end?” His wife followed his pointing finger and saw six or eight families from Gretz taking their places among the pilgrims.

  “They’re our people,” she confirmed.

  Thundering down the castle stairs Volkmar rushed to the gates, ordered the guards to follow him, and ran bareheaded out to intercept his travelers. “Hans!” he asked one. “Where are you going?”

  “To Jerusalem,” the slow-witted field hand replied.
/>   “Do you know where Jerusalem is?” the count demanded.

  “Over there,” the man replied, pointing toward Paris.

  “You get back behind the walls,” Volkmar growled impatiently. He summoned his guards, who cut the would-be pilgrims off from the disappearing mob. “What’s that on your shoulder?” the count asked one of the men.

  “The cross of Jesus Christ our Saviour,” the man replied.

  “Take it off,” Volkmar said, brushing at the offensive bits of frayed cloth, but his hand was stayed by that of Wenzel, who had followed the count to check on what might happen.

  “Sir, if these men wish to follow the way of our Lord, they must be permitted.”

  Volkmar wheeled to confront his priest, shorter by a head than he. “These men and women are needed to work my fields. Guards, get them back inside the walls.” The guards started to do so, but the priest continued his argument.

  “Would you oppose the will of God?” he asked.

  The question stunned Volkmar, for he was a man obedient to the law of Christ, but now his priest was asking him to reach conclusions on matters which he did not comprehend and he reacted roughly. “Inside the walls!” he shouted, and placing himself in the roadway with his arms spread wide like the branches of a cross, he barred the way. Grudgingly the would-be Crusaders filed back through the gates as Priest Wenzel blessed them for their holy effort, and when the gray-haired churchman finally turned to reprove the count, Volkmar growled, “No people of mine will follow the commands of a False Pope.”

  But his voice carried little conviction, for he had begun to weigh the words of Wenzel: were his peasants, in trying to join the marchers, acting in accordance with Christ’s wish? Perplexed, he was about to retreat to his castle when he saw his bailiff dragging back into the city the pots that had been used for feeding. “How much did it cost?” the count asked.