Sylvia

by Bryce Courtenay

  I placed my arm about him and he began to sniff, then he said still in the choking little boy’s voice, ‘But if you take my monk’s robe I shall be cold!’

  ‘Nay, Nicholas, you shall have my sheepskin coat,’ I comforted him.

  I saw the expression on Reinhardt’s face and gave him a quick cautionary look, restraining him from laughing at this transformation from would-be saint to frightened little boy. He had been converted by Nicholas’s preaching, but when he saw him enter his dark place at a time he was most needed, Reinhardt had grown ever more impatient and seemed no longer taken in by the boy’s power and mystique. ‘He sulks, hunched up like a crow in the wagon and now, without it, walks as if we are forcing him against his will. He says nothing, does nothing and we must call him blessed and our leader!’ he had railed.

  ‘It is in his nature, either the one thing or the other. We must persist, the children will not go without him,’ I had said lamely, knowing it seemed a poor excuse and that each day without him seemed to create more despair among the children.

  Reinhardt had been the first to say it. ‘Is this right? Is this God’s will? All the dying?’

  Because I knew that deep in my heart I was asking myself the same questions, I had grown suddenly angry. ‘Go on . . . be gone! Get your arse out of here!’ I had dismissed him with a backward wave of my hand. ‘Piss off! We don’t need you! You’re nothing but a Jonah!’ Then I had started to wail.

  But Reinhardt had not deserted us and seemed always cheerful and hopeful, and but for the time he suggested we leave the crusade and when he’d expressed these doubts, I had not seen his spirits down. Without him I dare not think how we would have endured. Whatever might be said of his sexual proclivities, which, in the eyes of the Church, sent him to certain and eternal damnation, he was the most courageous, forbearing and loyal man I have ever known.

  That night we camped in two craters to protect us from the wind; both proved to be natural amphitheatres. Nicholas, dressed in my rough peasant’s gown and well wrapped in my precious sheepskin coat, his head covered and my stave beside him, stood among the choir of healing angels where the children would expect to see me. In the gloaming, my face in shadow from the cowl, I preached once in each of the craters, my voice echoing in the surrounding cliffs and carrying to reach several thousand excited children.

  The reaction was astonishing. The huge crowd, all hungry, nay gripped by starvation, some near to death, stood to cheer and pray and sing as if a light from heaven had shone down upon them. It was plain that not one among them, other than the choir of the healing angels, knew that it wasn’t Nicholas of Cologne who preached to them. We had found a way to sustain our faith and that night we slept knowing that while a great deal of suffering lay ahead of us, we would cross these terrible peaks and passes and survive the thundering, rushing gorges and reach Italy beyond.

  I preached each night for the next few days, by the end of which time we had passed the highest point and had almost reached the long, sloping countryside leading into a vast valley with green fields that, it seemed from a distance, were not stricken by drought. Our path across the mountains was littered with the bodies of the dead and we estimated some one thousand tiny souls had perished coming over them. Near seven thousand children remained as we approached the fertile valley that had now become Italy and would eventually lead us to the sea. Then we would miraculously cross to Constantinople, held by the Venetians and the home of the Byzantine Christians where we hoped we might get a friendlier reception. From there we would enter the lands of the Saracens and then to Jerusalem. It all still seemed hopeful and attainable. The last night before entering the valley I preached a final time and used again Nicholas’s sermon of our goodwill when the almond trees would blossom in the spring.

  Nicholas, the morning of the night I preached this last sermon, had asked me for the magic mushrooms and by late that evening had come out of his trance, his eyes bright again and his demeanour eager to continue. Throughout our journey we had fed him first; what little we had he ate as his entitlement and though he was not plump he lacked the skeletal look the rest of us wore from months on the road. Throughout the journey he had seemed impervious to the suffering around him. Once when I had spoken of it, wondering why God would let His precious children suffer so, he had looked at me, completely lacking in sentience and as if I had suddenly blasphemed. ‘It is their wickedness that kills them. Those who die are not worthy in God’s eyes of attaining Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre. It is God’s wish that they perish – they are the chaff that is winnowed from the good corn and you must not grieve for their souls, Sylvia.’

  ‘But they are children, too young to carry such sin in their hearts and they have come with us believing!’ I protested.

  ‘We are all born in sin and only the pure in spirit will enter the Kingdom of God,’ he said sanctimoniously, then added, ‘or be with me to see Jerusalem and to pray at the Holy Shrine.’

  ‘That is utter bullshit, Nicholas! They die for lack of food and care!’ I cried out.

  He’d shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Sylvia. I do not take responsibility for the dead. They are in God’s merciful hands.’

  ‘First they are sinners and slain by God, now they are in His merciful hands? Make up your mind!’ I cried angrily. But Nicholas did not see this ambiguity. He will make a good priest, I thought angrily to myself, grabbing every sanctimonious catch-cry without a thought for what he is saying, just a sentence mumbled, a hand touching a head like a fly alighting here and there and everywhere, its only purpose to buzz and land and move again.

  But if I begin to sound somewhat self-righteous, I have a confession to make. As I preached each night for the final days of our journey across the mountains I grew to enjoy the power it gave me. The adoring and worshipping children, despite their parlous condition, glued to my every word, were lifted, encouraged and strengthened by my (well, Nicholas’s) sermons. While the voice I affected remained that of Nicholas, more and more the words were my own, my voice becoming bread and wine to the starving. I found myself carried away with my elucidation and the strength of my persuasive powers. I gloried in the ability I seemed to possess to make these children forget their misery for a few precious moments and to be transported to another, kinder world. It was exhilarating and I began to see how easily such arrogance and power over others could corrupt and how, like Nicholas, one might assume the mantle of the saints. I am ashamed to admit that the return of Jesus to once again possess the soul of Nicholas of Cologne left me jealous and resentful and I had need to ask Father Paulus to hear my confession.

  I had grown to love the little priest with all my heart and soul and I watched in dismay as he grew weaker each day. My only hope was that when we reached Italy I might find a monastery with a hospice where they would treat him. As we reached the foothills he needed two of my healing angels, one at each side, to guide him as he was too weak to manage on his own. He would often lapse into a delirium and then he refused to eat what little we could find. In truth, his dysentery prevented him from gaining any strength or benefit from the thin gruel mixed with what weeds we could gather. We made him take water constantly and in the end we fashioned a stretcher made from strips of spruce bark with four of us taking turns to carry him.

  We eventually left the main throng that was to continue with Nicholas, who with Jesus again at his side was once more our charismatic leader. Reinhardt had been sent ahead to see if he could negotiate a rat-ridding so that we might persuade the towns ahead to feed us. The four of us eventually reached a poor farm on the slopes, a stone cottage with a few fruit trees and a small rock-strewn garden of herbs, cabbage and turnips. A dozen hens scratched and clucked and a ewe, its dirty winter wool not yet shorn, stood tied to a stake driven into the ground. I could hear the snorting of two pigs in a sty behind the rude dwelling.

  The sole occupant was an old crone, with hair growing from her chin, her shoulders so stooped that her head appeared to be at the centre of he
r chest. Thankfully, she spoke some German, but with a strange accent and with much pausing and searching for words that, when she found them, she spat out in bouts of sudden cackling, fast and furious, then long pauses ensued, then another burst of cackled and mangled German. She told us that there was a monastery three days journey away, and while she had never travelled that far she knew of its existence from her son, who with his wife had died in an avalanche two years previously. She lived in the cottage with her two grandchildren, small boys of six and eight or thereabouts, she said. They were away grazing their three sheep and a small herd of goats in the mountains and would not return that night, for they were sleeping in a cave.

  She looked at the dying shape of Father Paulus, his cassock torn and ragged, his sandals broken and his freckled face gaunt with his sparse ginger hair matted with dirt. ‘So this is what a priest looks like?’ she cackled. Or words I took to mean this. ‘I have never seen one.’ She sniffed, her head nodding at the centre of her breast. ‘Now I have, I think little of what I see.’

  ‘He is very ill, frau. Not at his best.’

  It seemed a silly thing to say of the dying Father Paulus, but there seemed no other reply indefence of this ragged and broken little priest. I begged that we might sojourn the night in the stable. She said they had no stable but the priest could stay in the cottage, as she could see he was too sick to harm her and was a priest, so she would trust him, although she had heard tell that not all holy men were to be trusted. She gave us a little food, coarse bread and some bitter greens, which was what she herself ate. With the three girls and myself to feed I could see it was all she had to give and I thanked her for sharing it with us.

  ‘The hens will lay an egg, the ewe still gives a little milk and there are two cabbages plump enough and a turnip or two – I will manage well enough,’ she cackled generously. Although this is, at best, a rough translation of what I thought she said, with hens, milk, cabbages and turnips being mentioned.

  But Father Paulus could not eat even this poor fare and took only a few sips of water. As he lay on a straw pallet in the corner of the one-room cottage, I knew he was close to dying. I sat beside him praying that God might spare him long enough so that we could accomplish the journey to the monastery. But then I felt his hand reach out and touch me and I stopped praying and took his hand in my own. His eyes were over-bright and the freckled skin of his face seemed almost translucent. In the past months I had witnessed a great many children dying and with them the mothers of babies and adults sick before they left Cologne. I had learned that often with the dying there comes a few brief moments of profound lucidity and Father Paulus now licked his dry broken lips in an attempt to talk. What he said I tell only so that you may see in Father Paulus the richness of his spirit and the generosity of his heart and not so that I gain any praiseworthiness.

  ‘Sylvia, I have much to thank you for,’ he began.

  ‘Nay, Father, it is I who shall be ever grateful to you,’ I protested.

  He held up his free hand to stay my voice. ‘I have very few words left to spend and you must indulge me. Before you came into my life I wore a poor and worthless habit, a priest who didn’t preach and, even if his shyness would allow it, one who had nothing whatsoever to say. The world about me seemed so filled with the calamity of humans, of babble and greed and cruelty and wickedness, death and destruction, that I often doubted the very existence of God. Everywhere I looked there was ignorance and stupidity, with the Holy Roman Church anxious to maintain this status quo so that its princes may grow ever more wealthy and powerful.

  ‘The clamorous cries of hypocritical bishops and archbishops, cardinals and popes, princes and kings from their pulpits and thrones filled me with despair. They did not preach the message of salvation or heed the words of Jesus Christ the Saviour. Instead, they demanded that the common people must take up the sword against the Saracens in Spain and the Holy Land and now, of late, be granted a remission of their sins if they go to slaughter the Albigencians. This, so that the powerful of the Church may gain further riches and become even more powerful and gain more land and domination over others.’

  The old crone in the far corner of the room began to snore and I gave Father Paulus a little more water to quench his parched lips. Then he continued.

  ‘I spent my life as a humble scribe, scribbling the inanities of pompous bishops and writing down their lies and the duplicities they connived and contrived so that it might bring them closer to His Holiness in Rome and make them even richer and more powerful.’ He sighed. ‘Eventually I could bear it no longer and climbed into a tiny cell in the belltower of St Martin’s so that I might ring the bells to drown out this constant cacophony of humans and the vainglorious mouthing of priests and Princes of the Church. I prayed that God might grant me deafness and the sanctification of silence.’ Father Paulus paused and took a few drops of water from the cup I held to his lips.

  ‘Hush now, Father, you upset yourself too much and must try to sleep,’ I said gently.

  ‘Nay, child, I have but only these words in me and then I have one last request, but please let me complete.’ He took another sip of water. ‘And then, Sylvia, you came into my life, your mind ever inquiring, as eager as a puppy to learn, already master of at least two languages and now craving to write Latin. You played me at chess and immediately beat me. You learned all I knew of Latin grammar and in a quarter of the time, nay even less, than it had taken me to learn the same.’

  ‘And four times as long to master the goose quill,’ I said quickly. ‘“Sylvia, when it comes to the quill, you are the goose!”’ I laughed, reminding him of his witty remark.

  He smiled weakly. ‘And now you have brought me on this Children’s Crusade where I have at last learned the true meaning of serving God and can count myself worthy as a priest. You have given me back my voice and allowed me to serve my God with the fullness of my being.’ He smiled again. ‘Even to preach with a conviction and to beg alms for my children, knowing God guides my tongue. Where I was once afraid of life, in all the death and calamity we have together witnessed, I have once again gained courage.’ I barely felt his hand as he attempted to squeeze my own. ‘And you have given me love and friendship so that I may die knowing that God has granted me every joy and sorrow that a soul may possess. But in the end it is my faith and the light of the Lord regained that you have allowed me to find and that lets me embrace death with my bosom filled with joy.’

  ‘Don’t die, Father, there is a monastery not far from here where they may heal you,’ I cried, beginning to sob.

  ‘Sylvia, cry later if you must, now you must help to give me extreme unction,’ he said, his voice faded to near a whisper.

  ‘Father, I may not, I am not a priest and cannot perform a last anointing,’ I cried in despair.

  He gave a weak smile. ‘Then I ordain you, Sylvia. To me you are more, much more, than just a priest. Now repeat after me.’

  ‘Father, I have heard the words a hundred times and many more from your lips. Do you wish me to repeat them as you say them or shall I take the priest’s part and you the penitent?’

  ‘Aye, in your own voice as priest, Sylvia. My last wish is that you take up this mantle. If you cannot find a priest to give a last anointing, you must give each child the comfort of a penitential psalm. God sees you as worthy as any priest to perform this final earthly task before a soul departs the sinful flesh and the travail of the mortal body.’

  And so I committed his soul to God, not knowing if I blasphemed in doing so, but happy that it was what my tiny, loving friend wanted.

  ‘Ah, Sylvia, I have no more words except that I would rather it is you than the Holy Father himself,’ Father Paulus said, in little more than a whisper, all his words now finally spent.

  ‘Sleep now, Father. I shall pray for your recovery,’ I sobbed.

  But I could not remain awake praying beside his bed and must have fallen asleep and when I woke at dawn to the cry of the old crone’s rooster,
Father Paulus was dead at my side. In my heart he will remain forever the priest in the truest image of Christ, more so than all the priests and bishops, archbishops and cardinals I would ever meet. I went outside and sang a requiem in that early misty morning long before the sunlight came, and my voice, caught up in the stillness, echoed against the great cliffs towering above me. I felt that it rose ever higher and higher into the sky beyond the cloud-covered mountains so that the words to the glory of God would help to transport the little freckled, ginger-headed priest to heaven, where a choir of angels waited to welcome him. A place where bells rang that could not deafen him.

  And then a small thing, but for me a sign that God especially loved this humble priest and servant of salvation. We asked the old crone if we might bury him close by and where the rocky soil might be easiest to dig a grave.

  ‘Where the fruit trees grow,’ she replied. ‘It is the softest and the deepest soil, the best is near the almond tree.’

  And so his grave now lies beneath an almond tree that in the natural course of nature will come to blossom every spring with sprays of soft pink that turn to white to the glory of the Virgin and to all creation.

  We again caught up with the throng, but now it seemed the people had no love for these ragged, barefoot beggars who were ‘the German children’. We were not welcomed in Italy where, in our ignorance, we’d always thought they would be a pious people, closer to Rome, the earthly seat of God, who would, we thought, therefore embrace us. Instead they sent us away hungry, chastised us and attacked us, driving us from their towns. Every town we entered was worse than the one we’d left. Nicholas, who could not preach to them as he did not speak their language, had nothing to offer them except a ragged invasion of starving barefoot children.

  The healing angels, those who had survived the ordeal to this point, had now become a most glorious-sounding choir where I sang the solo parts and, of course, Reinhardt played the flute. Now as we entered towns we would sing and when a good crowd was formed I’d summon the birds, a bewonderment that never failed to bring the townsfolk to a sense of piety. Then I would follow this with a catechism in Latin that all recognised and so could participate, then also a short familiar sermon such as usually followed mass, though again, knowing my words would not be understood. All this was done in the hope of softening their hearts to the plight of our children.