Beloved Pilgrim

Beloved Pilgrim

Nan Hawthorne

© 2011 Nan Hawthorne. All rights
reserved.

Smashwords edition.

Dedication

To my friend, Jack, who knows his battle arts forward
and backward.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank a few billion people for
their help in putting together this novel. First, my number one
fan, Jim Tedford, who supports me in all I do as an author. Then,
of course, Jack Graham, my medieval warfare consultant. Also, Alex
Hogan and the other authors at JAMELN for their critiquing and
confidence., Skip Knox at Boise State University for the background
information on the Crusade of 1101, and Alice Beckett for her
painstaking editing and proofing.

Any lack in this work is my own omission and
should not reflect on the talented people mentioned above. Nor
should that list be considered complete: I owe a great deal to many
people.

This is a work of fiction. Every person
living or dead is either a product of my imagination or is my
interpretation of a historical figure and should not be considered
a faithful likeness.

Cover design by David Graham.

Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright
Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, and/or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the author.

With a loud crack the sword came down onto a
helm already knocked askew by an earlier blow. The helm flew off
and the wearer staggered and nearly lost his feet.

"Ho, valiantly done!" the fifteen-year-old
Elisabeth von Winterkirche called from her perch on the wooden
fence.

Her twin brother Elias made a mock bow. "I
thank you, my lady."

"You always take his side," the other boy,
Albrecht, who, like Elias, was squire to Sigismund von
Winterkirche, the twins' father.

"He's a better fighter than you are," she
stated emphatically.

"And better looking, too," Elias quipped. He
preened, stroking the barest shadow of beard growing on his
chin.

"I will concede that point," the shorter,
darker boy said. Elias looked up at him with that funny knowing
smile that irritated his sister so. It just did not seem to
fit.

Albrecht leaned to pick up his helm and put
it back on his head. "If this damned thing had straps, it wouldn't
come off so easily."

Elias let out a bark of derisive laughter.
"Oh, is that why I keep knocking it off. It's not my mighty and
well-delivered blows. It's the lack of straps." He lifted his chin
and waved his fingers at his own throat. "Look, no straps here
either. But my helm is sitting securely on my head."

Albrecht muttered something that made
Elisabeth burst out laughing.

"What did he say?" her brother demanded.

"He said your swelled head fills it so much it is
stuck," she explained.

Elias took a stance with his wooden sword
tilted up from his right side. "Have at me, varlet. I shall not
brook such ignoble insults!"

The two hefted their small shields and began
to move in a counterclockwise circle, each looking for openings in
the other boy's defenses. Elisabeth, unlike most girls, did not
watch the practice fighting for her own entertainment. She watched
each move while imagining herself in combat, detecting as best she
could what each opponent was trying to do, what might work better,
and what she would try given the chance. Those chances did come,
for the twins had been each other's only companion through their
father's absences and mother's frequent illness. Only when Albrecht
came to serve at Winterkirche did Elias have anyone else to
practice fighting with him. She itched to get in on this fight, but
contented herself for now just critiquing the boys' own moves.

Each had his practice sword up and held
parallel to the upper edge of his shield. She had long known that a
fighter had to keep his sword up above the level of his opponent's
shield if he had any hope of striking a blow on anything but the
shield. That was not without its utility, if one could deliver a
hard enough blow to knock the shield askew. Elias and Albrecht knew
each other's skills well enough not to waste effort on this move.
They circled each other looking for a headshot.

Elias, the taller, repeatedly brought the
sword swinging around to strike Albrecht's shoulder or head, but
Albrecht managed over and over to raise his shield enough to block
the blow or to meet sword with sword, resulting in the sharp thwack
of the blows. Elias constantly pressed forward, making Albrecht
retreat. Elisabeth pressed her lips tightly together with
impatience. Elias's greatest flaw was that he was all forward
motion, aggression, and not enough defense. If only Albrecht would
use that against him. Elias got in some bruising blows on the
shorter boy's right arm. Elisabeth mentally registered the point
but the fighters did not pause.

"Oh, for God's sake," she finally cried,
jumping down from the fence. "This is getting tedious. Let me fight
him."

The boys stopped and stared at her. "Fight
whom?" her brother asked.

"You, Elias. Albrecht just lets you chase him
around the yard. Give me your weapon."

Albrecht looked at Elias. "Go ahead. She
won't break anything," Elias said, rolling his eyes.

Elisabeth let Albrecht slip the shield onto
her right arm, his helm on her head and finally hand her the wooden
sword.

The siblings took their fighting stances.
Elisabeth let Elias come forward, backing up as he fully expected
she would. When he seemed to put all his force into the motion, she
stopped retreating and came at him raining blows every place she
could. He was startled at first, but regained his stability. He
hauled off and gave her a bruising whack on the hip. She dropped to
her knees but did not concede.

Elias grinned at her. He widened his stance
and took a step forward. She lifted her sword as if to swing around
and catch him right of his sword where one elbow had appeared. He
laughed and moved so his shield was up and between them. She let
her sword go back around and come up from below. His unprotected
groin received all the might she could muster.

He staggered back his mouth wide open but no
sound issuing forth. He collapsed to his knees, dropping his sword
and shield. He put his leather gauntleted hands to his groin and
toppled over sideways.

Elisabeth lifted her arms and crowed with
triumph. She danced around in place, chanting, "Yes, yes, yes!"
When she looked around again she saw Albrecht kneeling by her
brother, his arms out at his sides at a loss how to help him.

"He'll live to suffer worse blows than that,"
came a deep male voice from behind her. She turned to look at
Elias's and Albrecht's sword master, Dagobert. "Just let him lie
there a bit, and give him small sips of this." He reached out a
water skin to Albrecht. He turned to the girl. "Madam, you take
advantage of how much he underestimates you. If you were not his
sister, he would decimate you."

She scowled at him.

"And you put me in a difficult position. Your
mother has begged me to discourage your interest in fighting." He
looked at where Albrecht was helping Elias to sit up. "Speaking of
your mother, she wants you both. She has had a messenger."

The twins found Adalberta in her solar. She
sat in a window embrasure with her embroidery in her lap, her eyes
closed and her head back against the frame of the window. She
looked as drained as ever. For all her protests that she was
feeling stronger, neither of her children could ever see evidence
of it. She heard them come in and opened her eyes. She straightened
and tried to make it look like she had been busily stitching. As
little interest as Elisabeth had in such things, she could see
there had been no progress on the altar cloth in at least two
days.

"My darlings, I have the happiest of news! I
have had word from your father. The Lombards have let the Imperial
party cross their land. The four year exile is over!"

The joyful look on their mother's face was
not feigned. The two young people hurried forward to kneel at her
feet. "Oh, Mother, at long last!" Elisabeth gushed.

"I know it has been very hard on you, my
dears, to be without your father. And Elias, I know you have taken
it hard not to have the chance to leave home to squire in another
household. I will never stop being grateful that you agreed to stay
here with me, especially at first when I was so ill."

The twins managed to hide the shared
knowledge that their mother had never in their memory been anything
but ill. "Is father coming home soon?" the boy asked.

"He must go with the Emperor's army to
Cologne, then he and his household knights and men will come south
to us. In a few days, maybe more. But after all this time I think
we can wait patiently."

Elisabeth pressed one of her mother's hands
against her cheek. "Oh, no we can't," she laughed.

Elisabeth cursed like one of the grooms as
she tugged the hem of her skirt from the bramble where it was
caught. "Damn, if I could just wear britches like Elias and
Albrecht I shouldn't have to deal with skirts!"

It was her constant refrain of late. "I wish
I was a boy." Boys could learn to use weapons, boys could climb
trees, boys could go off for hours and wander in the countryside,
and boys did not have to sit still in Mother's solar and learn
excruciatingly dull needlework.

She knew her twin brother, Elias, was not
far. He and his fellow squire, Albrecht, had given her the slip
earlier that afternoon and gone off with their bows to their
favorite patch of woods. Elisabeth was becoming weary of this phase
in Elias's life. For months she had found her brother spending more
and more time with his friend and leaving her behind. Her mother
told her it was natural, and that soon she would be more interested
in ladies' concerns as her brother was in men's. "Balls," she
muttered under her breath, delighted at her own audacity.

Now she thought, "Serve him right if he
misses Father's homecoming. He knew Father's party was expected
today. Where is he?" she wondered as she pushed her way through the
scrub.

As she rounded the edge of a small coppice of
trees, she thought she saw movement. "There they are!" She slowed
her progress, wanting to surprise her brother and his friend.

A yelp meant that whoever was chasing whom
had caught him. Probably it was Elias, the taller and older, by a
year, of Father's two squires. She stepped forward to make herself
known. She froze.

It was indeed Elias who had caught his
friend. He had the boy with his tangle of brown curls pressed up
against the trunk of a tree, his own hands on either side of his
shoulders trapping him. It was what Elias was doing now that rooted
Elisabeth to the spot. He leaned slowly forward, bringing his face
down to the smiling Albrecht's, and he kissed him. Kissed him! He
kissed him on the mouth, and Albrecht responded. The captive
reached up his own arms and put them around the taller boy's body
and they melted together in an embrace that communicated it somehow
right to Elisabeth's belly.

Taking one step backward at a time, the girl
put the coppice between herself and the boys. Conflicting impulses
assailed her. She wanted to turn and run all the way back to the
manor. She wanted to burst in on them and demand an explanation.
She followed another impulse instead, walking quietly to the spot
by the brook where she sat on her favorite boulder. Drawing up her
knees, she wrapped her arms around her legs and dropped her chin to
rest on them.

What were Elias and Albrecht doing? She knew
perfectly well what. She just had not realized boys would do that
with each other.

The twins, Elias and Elisabeth, had been
inseparable until three years ago when Albrecht von Langenzenn had
come to Winterkirche from his own family's manor to become a
knight-in-training as Sigismund of Winterkirche's squire. It was
then, Elisabeth now realized, that the bond between the twins had
loosened. Though the three children were friends, she became aware
of a special new bond between the boys. She complained to her
mother about it. Adalberta stroked her soft brown hair and assured
her that Elias was of an age where he needed companions of his own
sex. A pouting Elisabeth nevertheless said nothing to her brother
that she felt abandoned.

Sitting on the rock the girl stared unseeing
at the brook as it flowed tumbling over fallen branches and the
stones of its streambed. Should she tell Mother about what she saw?
Her innate loyalty to her twin above all others caused her to say
"No!" aloud to the brook, the trees, and the birds around her. But
wasn't it a sin? Were you not supposed to get married before you
kissed anyone like that, and if so, how could two boys get married?
She had never heard of such a thing. Should she say something to
Elias himself? He would explain it to her. He was so kind and so
wise. He would make it all right.