Crusade (10 page)

The days seemed sweet, riding high with the older boys through the countryside in the warmth of spring. Although his cowl still shadowed his face day and night, he felt a new confidence in his stance. He even practised initiating a few brief conversations with young girls. They responded eagerly and courteously and he turned away, flushed with success.

All the while, he watched the Prophet carefully, relishing the opportunity to observe more closely.

The time to learn how Stephen worked his magic was very specific. When the Prophet was preparing to address a large crowd, he ordered his lieutenants to leave him alone and sat a little way off with his back to the crowd, his legs sprawled casually, holding his cross strangely, as though it were a shepherd’s staff. Sometimes he lay on his back, shading his face with his hand.

When he rose, he was clearly in an exalted state. His eyes glittered, brilliant and hypnotic. His sermons were passionately inspiring, in a rhythmic and poetic style that played the emotions like a maestro. His voice was an instrument of God – caressing, furious, consoling, rumbling, even screaming, then suddenly so low it purred but could be heard everywhere. When he stood tall, his arms raised, begging – nay, ordering – God’s blessing on them all, his golden halo reached heavenwards. When he paced in a small space, he turned abruptly in a low pouncing movement that drew swooning sighs from the girls. Charismatic creature, great cat, holy angel.

New recruits continued to join at almost every village they passed, few of them older than adolescents, most much younger. Thousands of children marched, prayed, ate and slept without adult organisation or restraints, led only by a group of boys of whom the oldest was barely eighteen, selected by a twelve-year-old prophet. This alone was a miracle.

But Robert’s novel and enjoyable position as one of those privileged leaders did not blind him to the dramatic difference in Stephen when he was released from the extraordinary fervour of his preaching. Stephen was truly a devoted servant of Christ – when he was filled, miraculously, with the Spirit. But when he was not preaching to his flock, Robert was astounded to realise that the Prophet was a master manipulator, shrewd, lazy and conceited. He enjoyed food with his lieutenants before others were served and he never went hungry. He beguiled his chosen youths, permitting them to take care of his every need as if he were bestowing generous favours. He played them off against one another, and then turned remote and cruel overnight, rejecting their fawning praises with no explanation. Not once in private did he speak of Jesus or the Church, not once did he give any hint of a desire for spiritual growth in himself or others.

Robert spoke very little among Stephen’s group, and no one noticed his observant attention. He had a role and a purpose, and he was paid with inclusion, not respect. He learned the limits of that equation during his first meal with the group. As the bowls of pottage were being filled around the group’s fire, Robert coughed, opened his breviary to lend himself some gravitas, and offered, ‘Shall I lead us in grace before we begin our meal?’

There was a sudden quiet. The boys turned enquiringly to Stephen. Lounging on his side, Stephen reached out a languid arm, grabbed a hunk of bread and stuffed it into his mouth. He laughed in Robert’s face, exaggerating his open-mouthed chewing. The other boys nearly fell into the fire with hilarity, rolling like puppies on the grass.

Robert pulled his hood down further and tried to shrink into himself. The group quickly lost interest, but it was a while before he dared to serve himself, and he said grace silently. Reaching into his pack for his horn spoon, his finger was cut by something sharp. The messenger who brought his pack from his old group had dumped it carelessly from the horse to the ground, and his clay lamp was smashed.

A punishment that serves you right
, he told himself, licking a little blood from the finger.
’Tis a sin to refrain from acknowledging Christ. You told the abbot this Crusade would lead you closer to God. Take care that your weakness does not send your soul on a journey to Hell instead
.

Angry at himself, he was angrier at Stephen. But the anger contained a kernel of gratification. The young Prophet’s apparent perfection, his dramatic channelling of God’s word, had shaken Robert’s sustaining faith in a precocious greatness within himself. Now there was a secret pleasure in uncovering feet of clay. If Stephen turned out to be ranked lower before God, didn’t that mean his own rank was higher?

One night Robert was present for a conversation around Stephen’s fire in which the boys boasted in gory detail about what they would do to the first Muslims and Jews they found. As the beer flowed, Stephen and his henchmen competed with one another to think of the cruellest torture methods.

Disgust and revulsion rose like bile in Robert’s throat as he slipped away from the oblivious group to pace in the dark forest.

‘O God, true General of our Crusade,’ he prayed, ‘surely Your beloved son would not want these false Christians as His soldiers? Yet they too believe they have been chosen by Thee, that they do Thy will. How can we ever know Your will with certainty?’

Robert had been alone all his life, yet he had never felt as alone as he did among those young people gathered together in the name of Jesus Christ.

Prophet Stephen preached less often as the weeks passed. He was roused to his charismatic state of prophecy only when they reached towns that were substantial enough to provide a worthwhile number of new Crusaders. He was hardly seen in the ranks during the daily march.

But in the evenings, as the groups of one hundred sat around their fires, he could be glimpsed wandering from gathering to gathering along with his two closest lieutenants, never approaching close to any circle but watching from a slight distance, his hypnotic eyes slipping from face to face, sometimes making a quiet comment to which the other boys replied with approval and low laughter. Each of them carried a handsomely tooled leather flask and took frequent sips.

Robert was unable to get close enough to hear what was being said, but he noticed that sometimes one of the boys would crouch behind one of the girls and whisper a few words to her. The girl seemed startled, but each time the chosen one stood up and followed the older boy obediently into the darkness beyond the circle of fire. The boy would return in a few minutes, and go off with his friend to the Prophet’s fire. But the girl was not with him. Nor was the Prophet.

The same thing happened almost every night, although never twice in the same group. Some of the girls looked defiant, even proud, as they slipped back to the group, long after everyone else was sleep. Most looked shaken and disoriented. One of them wept for a long time, and Robert stumbled away before she could hear his own sobs at her shame and distress. It was clear to him now. The girls were always pretty. The Prophet was nowhere to be seen while the girls were away. Robert writhed against the knowledge. He ground his teeth in helplessness.

Charlatan!
he would accuse Prophet Stephen silently whenever the boy preached.
False idol! Antichrist!
he would hiss at night when he could not sleep.

The worst was that, when he tried to pray for help, he could not find words of humble beseeching, only violent curses the likes of which had never come to his lips before.

He shuddered. He was losing his faith and without it he would be lost entirely. The abyss before him was bottomless.

And yet he did not leave. He could have taken up his bundle, fallen behind his group and begun the walk in the opposite direction, back to the abbey. Any of the Crusaders could have left the Crusade at any time. But very few did. Was his reason the same as theirs: that the Prophet Stephen exerted a powerful fascination, a magnetism that was almost impossible to resist? Or was it that Robert was curious to see how it all ended? He could not believe that this fake Moses would actually lead them to the Promised Land, yet there was always a slight possibility and that was too tempting to give up.

And what if I did leave the Crusade
, he thought.
I have nowhere to go but back to my old life.
He pictured the small world of the monastery and the looming figure of the abbot.
Nothing will change until I die of old age within those stone walls
, he despaired.

If only he could throw himself on the mercy of the rector of the university, beg him to allow Robert to study there in exchange for any work at all. But the rector would not want to alienate the Abbot of Blois.
I will be the abbot’s possession, his chess piece, for ever
,
he thought.

Chapter Ten

Late one afternoon, they passed a large village. On the far side of a village pond, the small rough houses were like those in any village, with poor children who stared at them with wondering eyes and a few women who looked as if they had never had enough food to give one beggar, never mind a crowd of thousands. But on the side of the pond closest to the road stood a sizeable cluster of blackened, ruined wooden huts, closely interspersed with a few stone houses that appeared almost undamaged but deserted. The sight was curious. Clearly the stone houses had withstood a big fire on this side of the pond. But where were the people who owned them? Why was the village almost empty?

An older boy passing from the back to the front of the group overheard their speculations and tossed them an explanation. ‘Those stone houses are not empty. The Jews inside are hiding because Crusaders have passed through here before and put their side of the town to fire.’

‘Jews,’ they murmured, and the word spread through the crowd. They could see now that the remaining houses had barricaded doors and shuttered windows. But the wooden huts were burned beyond repair, including what must have been a very tall building in the centre.

What had the Jews done to the Crusaders to have their houses destroyed, Georgette wondered. Patrice would know, but in this great crowd, it had become difficult for the girls to find each other for a chat. Perhaps the Jews had tried to stop the Crusaders from marching to Jerusalem. Well, they had been put through a terrible scare and would learn not to create difficulties again. What evil people they must have been to have persecuted gentle Jesus, who brought them the laws of loving others as oneself. And their wickedness seemed not to have ceased, she mused.

Soon the travellers settled for the night in a field of yellow mustard flowers, glorious under the setting sun. Georgette felt uneasy at being so close to the village of the Jews during the night. She imagined malevolent eyes peering out at her from between the cracks of houses or barns.

Some of the older boys lounging around the fire were also thinking about the Jews nearby.

‘There cannot be many left,’ one said. ‘A dozen of us with stout sticks could wedge open a window and haul out the sinners. We’d torture them until they swear to take up the True Faith.’

‘All Jews are moneylenders,’ another boy told everyone. ‘My father said they take advantage of good Christians in trouble.’

‘Loaning money and charging interest is forbidden by the Lord,’ someone reminded them.

‘So let’s take back their ill-gotten gains,’ came the eager response. ‘It is for our sacred cause.’

With such temptation at hand, a dozen sturdy farm boys stole off into the darkness, heading back towards the village they had seen earlier. In their midst, enthusiastically swinging a thick tree branch as a makeshift cudgel, was Gregor.

The big brass bell was rung to summon all to vespers around the largest communal fire and Georgette was swept along with the crowd. Her mouth chanted automatically the well-known words and she sang mechanically too, but in her mind she was picturing her brother and the other boys chiselling open those few houses and dragging out the infidels in order to show them the light.

The boys had been excited about this early opportunity to be true Crusaders. Gregor’s eyes had glittered. Such action would suit his angry nature, she reflected. This was probably exactly what he had pictured when he volunteered for the Crusade.

The boys returned very late. Georgette hadn’t been able to sleep, despite her weariness, and she hurried to serve them from the cauldron of pottage still hanging from a tripod above the glowing coals of the fire. The biggest one, who seemed to have appointed himself their leader, swaggered over to the fire and bade her hurry.

‘Hungry from a good night’s work, eh, boys?’ he called out.