Crusade (18 page)

‘We will be able to reach my father’s house unseen from here,’ Georgette said. ‘So the old crones who sit in the square watching everyone’s business will not send a messenger to my father before I can reach him myself. Perhaps busybodies live to such a ripe old age because the saints dread to welcome their gossiping tongues into the peace of Heaven.’

Robert grinned. ‘Even in the monastery we had old crones in skirts, but they were male.’

‘I used to take this path after Easter Mass or on feast days, not to avoid the gossips but to avoid the young louts who loitered in the square after Mass. They wouldn’t do much to me, but they loved to provoke Gregor into a rage. So I used to tell him I wanted to stretch my legs after the service, and sometimes it would work and he would accompany me.’

Her voice trembled. The familiar surroundings gave rise to vivid memories of her brother, and she was sick at the thought of telling her father he no longer had a son.
Please, God, may I have a father still
,
she thought.

Georgette led them behind two houses and paused at the third. The mortar of clay, dung and straw covering the woven strips of wood that made up their walls was crumbling, and she could see the reason. The tree saplings her father had planted where walls joined each other had been allowed to diverge from their slow job of sealing the joint. Upstart side branches were trying to push the walls apart like the arms of blind Samson in the temple of the Philistines. The yard was overgrown with weeds.

Georgette tidied her skirt and smoothed her hair, but still she hesitated. Robert gave her a gentle push towards the hut. He walked a few yards away and occupied himself with unpacking his bundle.

Slowly, she opened the door. Sitting in front of the fire with his elbow on the table and his head resting wearily on his hand, was her father. His back was towards the door and clearly he had not heard her enter, for he sat motionless.

Swallowing, Georgette glanced around. The hut was dirty and unkempt. Her father’s cracked leather working boots lay next to him, although she had always been firm that he and Gregor must remove their boots and leave them at the door so as not to bring the muck of the farm and lanes inside. There was only one lonely salted ham hanging from the rafters, and a string of sausages she herself had smoked shortly before she left. The half-loaf of bread on the table was misshapen and under-baked.

As a sob caught in her throat, her father heard the sound and turned round. She did not remember that his eyes had been poor, yet he looked at her and squinted, then looked again.

Slowly, he stood up, a man who was still in his thirties but already old from unrelenting work
 . . .
and the disappearance of his children. Georgette dared not approach him. But he hurried towards her, reached out wonderingly to touch her face, and grabbed her in a tight clasp such as she had never received from him before.

‘Georgette, Georgette,’ he cried and she cried too. For a moment they were complete.

Suddenly, she felt his body stiffen and she knew that he was looking for Gregor behind her.

‘I am so sorry, Father. I could not save him,’ she cried. He held her at arm’s length to see her face, his eyes begging for a different outcome.

‘He had the ague,’ she sobbed. ‘He coughed blood. I made a physic for him and he drank it. I tried to keep him warm. But in the morning his body was cold. I am so sorry, Father.’

‘Aagh,’ he grunted, covering his face with his hands. Apprehensively, Georgette stroked his bent shoulders. Would he blame her? Would the pain be too much for him?

Her father closed her in his arms again. Together they grieved for the strong, fiery, angry, lost Gregor.

After a while, Georgette released herself gently. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘God has been good to me. I was alone after Gregor died and He gave me a true friend. I wish to introduce to you my friend, my protector, my
 . . .
betrothed, Robert of the Abbey of Blois.’

Lifting her voice, she called Robert’s name and bade him enter. Her father turned, his mouth open at her words and at the sight of a young man of indeterminate age – from his face, a youth, but from his demeanour, a man. Georgette was a child. Who could possibly have arranged her betrothal without his permission? But before he could say anything, his words were arrested by Robert’s steady gaze. As if the youth could read his mind, his first words addressed the older man’s consternation.

‘I am honoured to meet Georgette’s father, sir. Had these been ordinary times, I would have asked my guardian, the Abbot of Blois, to approach you first and ask your permission that I might have your daughter’s hand in marriage. I pray that you will forgive our unorthodox engagement and bless our union.’

Georgette’s father measured the youth for a long time and turned to his daughter. The girl’s cheeks were glowing at the words of her chosen. She was a child no more. And the boy, or man, or something different from both, so unusual was he, waited respectfully for her father’s answer.

Slowly, Georgette’s father took her hands and joined them with the boy’s hands. He lifted his own arms above their heads and said simply, ‘You have my blessing. And thanks be to God for bringing you home safely to me.’

There were more tears for Gregor, just a few stories about their terrible journey, and some toasting of the betrothal with a sharp, burning liquid from a bottle Georgette’s father had hidden in the house.

‘And now, Father,’ Georgette said, her voice shaky with dread. ‘What of Father David. Is he well?’

‘My daughter, be strong.’ Her father hesitated. ‘Father David is in Heaven now.’

Georgette’s eyes widened. She shook her head.

‘It was quite soon after you left,’ replied her father. ‘The village women who tended him on his deathbed say he spoke of the Crusade. He said the Crusade was ungodly madness and he should have tried to stop it. But others said that was sacrilege, and he must have gone out of his mind or he would not have said such bad things.’

The saintly priest had been one of the first victims of the Children’s Crusade. He had seen the truth, and it had killed him. No, she, Georgette, had killed him.

Georgette cried for a long time, turning first to her father and then to Robert, but there was no comforting her.

Chapter Twenty

The next day was a hard one. It was impossible to evade the questions of the families of the young Crusaders, so they had to face the harsh duty of telling several parents that their wandering children would never return. One small headstone for Patrice and another for Gregor were placed next to the simple gravestone of the priest. Around all three, Georgette planted the old man’s favourite flowers, pale yellow primroses and mauve loosestrife.

There was a different service the following day, a simple but sweet wedding for the young couple in the church where she had grown up under the care of the old priest. The bride and groom declined the traditional dancing and gay music after the ceremony, but a hastily baked bridal cake and horns of bride-ale were served in the village square.

Finally, four days after their arrival in the village, Georgette and Robert departed again, bound for the Abbey of Blois.

Georgette’s father embraced Robert before they left.

‘I don’t want to lose another son,’ he explained as he shamefacedly wiped tears from his face.

‘But remember, Father, you are to come and live with us in our home as soon as I have found work,’ said Robert.

Georgette dashed back into her father’s arms for yet another embrace. ‘I will never abandon you again. Never,’ she pledged.

A merchant travelling their way made space for the newly-weds in his cart. They carefully positioned the priest’s chest of precious manuscripts. The priest had written a simple will when he became sick, leaving his eight or ten beloved books to Georgette. She knew nothing of their considerable value in gold, but she was overwhelmed by their value in learning. For she and Robert were equally determined that she would continue her own studies, beginning with the wealth she now owned.

Georgette sat on the cart, her anxiety spoiling the novel ride.
Such a learned man will surely find my simple background an unsatisfactory match for his protégé.
She became more nervous when they reached the lands owned by the Abbey of Blois, stretching green and vast ahead of them.
He is the abbot of a great monastery, and I am but a peasant girl.
In another mood, she would have enjoyed the orderliness of the fields, the tall trees, the entrance with its soaring pointed arch.
So different from the poor home of my beloved priest.

Her anxiety was premature. The abbot no longer resided at Blois. He had been summoned from the abbey to Paris, where he was to assist the judges of the standing council in the ecclesiastical court.

‘’Tis a great honour for Père Abbé,’ the friendly monk at the door of the monastery told them. He had greeted Robert first formally in Latin, and then affectionately in a simple country French, and he spoke French thereafter for Georgette’s benefit. He insisted on leading them to join the midday repast in the great refectory, where the monks served daily meals to the poor. Now they sat in the huge echoing hall, and many people came up to welcome Robert back and to exclaim at his brief, edited summary of their journey.

Robert had told Georgette of the jolly twin cooks who provided a lonely young boy with the only ounce of spoiling he received. Now he asked permission, suddenly shy, to enter the great kitchen and introduce his new wife to them.

Their host hesitated. ‘They disappeared,’ he said.

The young couple looked at him blankly.

The monk glanced around to check if anyone was nearby and leaned closer. ‘We are not supposed to talk about it, but an apprentice cook reported to the abbot that, for a fortnight or longer, the twins had been spending excessive time every day talking with a traveller from the south. A very poor-looking fellow, he reported, ragged and wearing rough wooden shoes. The apprentice said the stranger sometimes read to them from a book written in a dialect similar to ours. Couldn’t have been the Holy Bible because it was not in Latin, but the few words he could catch were about Lord Jesus.’

The monk glanced around again before continuing.

‘The abbot summoned the twins and ordered them to send the stranger packing. A few days later, the twins were gone too. After nigh on twenty years in the kitchen here.’

The bells rang and the monk hurried off, urging them to hasten lest they be late for prayer.

‘What words about Lord Jesus could a stranger offer that would be strong enough to draw two monks from their abbey?’ Georgette mused, turning to Robert.

But his face was stricken. ‘I wanted to thank them,’ he whispered.

Georgette was not reluctant to have her meeting with the august personage delayed. But Robert was anxious about the possible effect of Abbot Benedict’s new posting on his own future. They slept at the abbey that night, in separate rooms as was the rule, but left early the next morning to take advantage of a ride to Paris with a farmer who was taking a wagonload of ducks that had been specially ordered for a feast.

‘Do they not have a market in the whole city of Paris where they could find ducks more easily?’ Georgette asked.

‘Aye,’ the farmer told her as his horse trotted along, ‘but some folks are so rich that they care which breed of ducks they serve their guests. They are willing to pay for the transportation from another place if such birds are not available at the market when they need them. Plus an extra charge I add simply because I’ve discovered they’ll pay it!’ the farmer said with a smile of satisfaction at his business acumen.

Georgette watched the ducks as they squawked in their wooden crates. Certainly, they were plump and glossily healthy, but could someone really taste the difference between the flesh of one fat duck and another?

The gates of the city came into view. Georgette whispered a prayer for her brother, who had not been spared to enter the city he so wished to see. She could not believe her luck when the cart passed under the heavy portcullis without a word from the guards. She was inside one of the greatest cities in Christendom. She, little Georgette from the village of Illiers, was in Paris.

The smell of the city assailed her first. Her nostrils wrinkled at the strong odour of sewage running down the street. And she felt oppressed by the buildings rising steeply on either side of the street, soaring to Heaven yet blocking out that heavenly light. What a great amount of stone must have been quarried to build such towers – enough to leave a black hole in the earth as big as the city.