Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade (25 page)

Friederich perked up and bounded toward Wil with a wide grin spread over the whole of his bony face. He reached his fingers into his satchel and giggled. “Well, sir, I kept me a fair portion of pennies.”

“Ha! Friederich, well done!” cheered Wil.

The boy proudly dropped his coins into Karl’s open palm. “Find Georg a good homespun.”

Basel was home to the legions of Rome nearly eight centuries before Pieter’s arrival, and the old man marveled at the impressive sight spread before him from the bow of his squat vessel. As he rested his eyes on the twin spires of the cathedral just beyond the dock gate, he began recollecting his memories of the city and the plan of its streets.
Would be good to stretch the mind and shorten the walk,
he thought. He could picture the long rows of thatched roofs running up narrow streets to the hilltops of the wealthy. He remembered the wretches who lived at the bottom and how their homes were so apt to flood.

Basel’s streets were cramped but inviting nonetheless. Pieter recalled the peddlers and minstrels, jugglers and fortune hunters; the multitude of inns offering tables of breads, wines, cheese, and ales from much of the world. This was a gateway of the Alps and here converged the dark-eyed traders from the eastern duchies of Moravia and Carinthia, the colorful dancers of Burgundy, and the elaborate emissaries of the pope. The city’s comforts were a welcome sight for those exhausted northbound travelers who had transversed treacherous mountain passes and rugged terrain in their journey toward the Teutonic north. And it was a restful hospice and ample storehouse for those about to negotiate those same trails southward.

A stiff, warm breeze coaxed Pieter’s single-masted ferry forward and, with a few mighty heaves of the oarsmen, the weathered boat banged harmlessly into a warped dock. After gently reprimanding several impatient fellow passengers, the old man climbed safely atop the stretch of planks leading to the bank. But nearly to the shoreline, his faithful staff suddenly wedged firmly in a gap in a badly split plank. The loud oaths which promptly flew from his curling lips were conspicuously inconsistent for a man of the cloth and caught the curious attention of a dusty traveler.

“Good day, old fellow. It would seem as if you’ve a small problem.”

Pieter wrinkled his brow, visibly annoyed. “Aye. And it seems that you’ve a good eye for what’s plain to see.”

The stranger grasped the staff with his one arm, jerked the old crook loose, and handed it to the frustrated priest.

Pieter sighed. “Well … bless you, my son. I suppose I am in your debt.”

The stranger smiled and nodded and set his hand on Pieter’s bony shoulder. “It would seem so. And I might add, sire, that by your look y’be, or at least once were, a priest?”

Pieter blushed.

“Aye. And so I knew. Now, forgive my boldness, but y’d be the better for your cause if y’d be a bit more mindful of your tongue.”

The old man’s eyes sparkled and he laughed heartily. “I am undone by such a gentle rebuke, stranger, and am in your debt again. I should like very much to repay both your kindnesses with a tall tankard of ale.”

“Ah, Father, thank you, but it seems we be traveling in opposing directions.”

Pieter grasped him by the shoulder. “Of little import, good man. Your simple kindness must needs be honored. I beg you to join me over bread and a quick ale.”

The traveler hesitated. “I ought press on; perhaps some other time in some other place?”

“Should you take a moment to study me, you’d be sure to see I’ve but a few more times and places left to my account,” noted Pieter. His twinkling eyes snagged their prey.

“Ach
… so. Very well, old man,” sighed the stranger. “I yield to your magic.”

The stranger was of moderate height. His curly hair hued red-brown under the full sun and was long and rather unkempt. A close-cropped beard edged his broad and kindly face and his right eye was covered by a black leather patch tied behind his head by a thin cord of wound hemp. He wore a rough-spun, long, brown tunic over a well-worn pair of leather leggings, each covered by the dust of many months or even years of traveling. His feet were bound by shin-high leather boots and at his left side hung a short, stout blade on a wide belt. His left arm was missing and his sleeve was tied neatly under his stump. He bore the countenance of a sad though gentle man whose humility of spirit one might easily measure in the tone of his speech and the ease of his carriage.

Pieter and the stranger mixed well, like honey in hot tea. They laughed and joked of easy things as they passed through the city gate and under the menacing eyes of Basel’s terrifying griffen. The stranger pointed to the end of a row of shops running awkwardly up a steep hill where he spotted a welcoming inn, complete with a collection of long tables bordered by badly warped, wooden benches.

“So, stranger,” said Pieter as they settled at their table, “by God, in all my many years I have n’er drank with someone whose name I did not know.”

The stranger looked away sheepishly.

Pieter pressed. “Your pardon, sir, did y’speak your name?”

The man answered slowly, “You ought be content to call me Stranger.”

“Nay,” answered the priest. “‘Stranger’ is no name … ah, you’ve yet to learn of mine own. I am known as Pieter … and y’may be content to call me Pieter.”

The stranger smiled. “I’d rather forget m’name,” he said quietly. “And I’ve fair cause.”

Pieter looked on with sympathy and gently asked, “Might I at the very least call you Friend?”

The stranger’s eyes moistened a little and he nodded.

“There you have it then,” said Pieter. “I am Pieter and you are Friend, and I am most content with that.”

He turned to a stout maid rushing past and, with as much bravado as he could muster, blustered, “You there! Ale-maid! A tankard for Friend and Pieter.” He giggled like a schoolboy, remembering the riotous days of his youth. Unfortunately, Pieter had given more thought to his lively memory than to his empty purse and when the ale was presented, his merriment abruptly ceased. He now found himself staring squarely into the angry face of the buxom wench standing over him.

Friend thought Pieter’s hair looked all the whiter against his fresh-reddened cheeks. The old man cleared his throat and timidly tendered his one-tooth smile in defense.

The growling ale-maid folded her arms over her ample bust and glared down her flared hook nose at the perspired priest. “Stop smiling, y’crusty old man and pay me. And be quick about it… I’ve others, y’know.”

Pieter grimaced. His inventive mind had failed him and he could think of nothing other than the swollen face of the miserable maid drawing closer and closer to his. He began to fumble for words. The amused stranger chuckled and tossed a penny on the table. Pieter bowed his head. “I am in your debt again, my friend. Please believe I’d no plan for such a thing. I … I’ll pray a special blessing upon you … you ought know these robes do give my prayers some weight.”

Friend looked hard at Pieter and responded sternly. “Pieter, accept my kindness for what it is and do not try to buy it.”

The man’s words were straight and true, and the surprised Pieter was even more ashamed. “Again I am in your debt. You do well to rebuke me for my own sake … ‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend.’ Forgive me.”

Friend patted the old priest affectionately on the shoulder and ordered another ale and before long the two had hoisted not one tankard but many, many more than prudence would have hoped! After drooling a gulp, a melancholy Pieter leaned in closer. “So, Friend, forgive m’intrusion, but yer eye b-betrays the look of a man under a heavy p-penalty. What offense has cost y’yer good name?”

Friend looked down at the table and began to speak slowly. “I could not bear m’wife and was in need of a penance, so I joined with the armies of the lords as a servant in their war against rebellious serfs in the north. I… I worked to hide my hatred for her in such good deeds …” His voice began to rise. “
Ach
. I am but a liar, a pretender, and a weak man. I fear my soldiering had but little to do with serving the Church.” He paused and chased the lump in his throat with a long draught. “And yet worst, in so doing, I forsake m’two fair sons.”

Pieter listened intently. The spirits of the ale had not clouded his compassion. He studied the heavyhearted stranger and gently touched his arm. “I, too, know something of pain, my good man,” he said.

Friend simply stared at the brown brew in his tankard.

“Nay, nay, I do know something of it,” Pieter insisted. “I have told few of this, but when I was a youth at university I wed the beautiful daughter of the Duke of Rheinfeld. Her name was Anna Maria and I thought her the most precious flower of the Empire.” Pieter wiped his eyes. “She had long hair and deep, green eyes. Her skin was pure, without pockmark or blemish, like the finest wheeled pottery. When she laughed, her eyes lit like candles and her cheeks blushed with the color of a deep-summer red rose. Her body was shaped in gentle curves and was full and firm. She was warm and tender and quick of wit. We spent hours laughing in the gardens, picking flowers together and dreaming.”

The old priest’s voice began to quiver and he paused. His expression suddenly changed. “But I soon learned of what poor clay my heart was formed. I was sent to Salerno to study medicine and apothecary and she came to my side for that warm, wonderful, Italian summer. But in September, the first day of it, as I recall, a Benedictine told me of a plague in Lombardy and, as I was oft wont to do, I seized opportunity and departed to observe what manner of healing might be of most profit. I spent nearly two months apart from my Anna Maria and spent my days and nights among the dying. My mind was filled with learning, but I soon longed for her touch and returned to her side without a thought of what demons might accompany me. So, a few brief days after All-Saints, she fell sick with fever and within a fortnight, at the very bells of terce, her spirit departed from me.

“I was required to burn her body myself and live in quarantine for two months. Those two months, my good man, were the times where I saw the selfishness of mine own heart in ways that few could possibly imagine.”

Pieter’s voice faded and his eyes filled with tears. An uncomfortable silence seized both men as well as a small group of rough patrons who had been drawn into the priest’s sad story.

But those listening were suddenly embarrassed by the tenderness creeping into their hearts and they worked quickly to break the mood. One toothless man abruptly raised his drink. “To … to Anna Maria,” he bellowed. Another cleared his throat and described in some detail how his wife was so unlike Pieter’s Anna Maria. “Aye. M’hag is like a rose as well—the thorny stem!”

A bald-headed peddler hastily wiped his eyes and roared that his wife had more the shape of an ox than a woman. “Much like yon ale-maid,” he roared. Another howled that his wife’s curves were most appealing, but it was her face that brought him terror by night!

Pieter and his new friend smiled, then chuckled, and soon joined the uproarious cackle of wild tales and loud guffaws. Pieter set his melancholy aside and grinned from ear to ear. Not to be outdone by tales of courtship and marriage, he climbed atop his table and commanded silence. A fellow held Pieter’s scrawny arm high as another splashed more ale into his tipping tankard and the tavern grew quiet. The dizzy priest cleared his throat and pronounced, “’A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day’!”

His companions cheered and clapped and called for more. Pieter was now quite carried away by his ale and stepped down to a wobbly stool, laughing and gasping for air. “‘Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife’!” he wheezed.

“Aye! No more a truth has e’er been spoke!” roared a voice from the crowd.

The ale-maid huffed and squeezed between the tables with pitchers of new ale, slapping the giddy, grasping men. Her face was flushed and she made no effort to disguise her disgust.

Pieter was struggling to recall more Scripture. He scratched his head and then spread his arms wide over his dubious congregation. He hushed his friends and choked back a giggle. He made a halfhearted effort to recapture a sanctified composure before slurring, “‘Like gold in a pig’s snout is a beautiful w-woman who shows no discretion.’” He barely finished the verse before he toppled off his stool into the arms of his cheering companions.

But the ale-maid had reached her end and she stormed over to Pieter. “Old fool,” she bellowed over the din. “Your poor Anna Maria showed little discretion in choosing you.”