Crusade (6 page)

There was another roar of approval from the crowd as the priest finished. Prophet Stephen raised his arms to Heaven, prayed for the good health of Philippe Auguste, and preached eloquently about the greatness of kings as representatives of God on earth.

Gregor immediately forgot the insult that had infuriated him earlier. ‘King Philippe Auguste himself praises our holy Crusade,’ he whispered, as proud as if he himself had been awarded royal approval.

The Prophet was concluding his address. ‘Harken well. Today it is the King who is blessing us. When we reach holy Jerusalem, we will ask the Lord’s blessing on the King.’

‘We will be the ones to bless the King,’ Gregor repeated with satisfaction.

That night, their second in the meadow outside the city gates, the bread was not as fresh, the stew had been replaced by broth, and the mead was in short supply. Gregor’s mood swung again.

‘His Royal Highness is too fine to speak plainly, but he is showing us with his food that we have worn out our welcome and should move on,’ he remarked. ‘One day of hospitality and he is done with us.’

The next day they turned their backs on the walls of the big city and took to the road again. Patrice came to walk with them a while, and Gregor and Georgette asked if she knew what route they were taking. Patrice was an excellent source of information. Her brain spilled questions and soaked up answers.

‘We are on our way to Vendôme,’ she answered.

Gregor looked blank, but Georgette tried to picture the map of France that Father David had shown her.

Patrice explained, ‘Prophet Stephen is going back the way he came when he left his own village, Cloyes. Vendôme is the nearest city to Cloyes, and that was where he first preached and gathered crowds. There were many children who wanted to join him, but he told them to gather in Vendôme and await his return from an audience with the King.’ Then Patrice brightened as she had an idea. ‘Maybe the citizens there will be so glad to see us that there will be lots of food.’

A Crusader who had gone ahead returned at a gallop, his face alight with excitement and his words almost unintelligible. Word of Prophet Stephen had spread throughout the region. There were so many awaiting the Prophet that he had not been able to count them, so many that they could not fit in the town square and had decamped to an open meeting place outside the city gates.

Gregor and Georgette turned to each other in silent amazement as they came within sight of Vendôme. Possibly two thousand children and youths were standing with their bundles and their crosses in the grassy meadow. They roared with excitement and might have mobbed Stephen if he had not spurred his horse into a gallop, thundered a circle around the entire crowd in triumph, and eventually halted on a raised point, where he began preaching. Instantly, the huge crowd became silent.

He was so beautiful, Georgette marvelled. His body was long and lean and perfect, his hair was a miracle, a sign from God that he had been chosen. He shone with a light that drew her irresistibly. Did the first Christians feel this powerful call when they listened to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount?

The crowd shifted slightly and she caught sight of Patrice. Patrice was looking in another direction, whispering to a girl beside her as she pointed to whatever she could see of Vendôme above the city walls. She was not listening to Stephen at all. This was just another stop on an adventure for Patrice, Georgette realised.

Whether their hearts were full of God or wanderlust, the Crusaders left Vendôme the next day as a small army rather than a large crowd.

Now there were about thirty groups of a hundred Crusaders each. The pace of the journey slowed to a slouch and it was near impossible to find enough food for all.

It happened that they marched for two days without anything at all to eat. On the third morning, Georgette woke up with her stomach aching. In her past life she had never had abundant food to eat, but neither had she ever been truly hungry. It was strange how much her stomach felt like a separate living thing, growling and rumbling, tightening in occasional, painful spasms. She felt squeezed flat, like an empty sheep bladder with the air sucked out.

The boys killed a boar and several deer before noon, but the soup that resulted, divided among so many, contained only a mouthful of meat for each child. That was the only food they had, plus acorns and berries they found along the way, some of which caused diarrhoea and vomiting. Patrice came by to tell Georgette that some boys in her group were chewing on bark and reporting it to be not as inedible as expected, but she admitted she had not tried it herself yet. The younger children cried inconsolably that long third day.

As she lay down at dusk, Georgette heard the sounds of a child retching, coming from behind a bush. Rising wearily to her feet, she called out reassuringly and walked over to help. A girl of about eight years was stuffing earth into her mouth, bits of grass and tiny stones included. As Georgette approached, she vomited up the whole mess, but no sooner was her mouth empty than she thrust more earth into it. Saliva and bile dripped from her chin. Her eyes were wide and overly bright. When she noticed Georgette, she scampered further into the bushes, disappearing from view.

‘Like a creature of the wild,’ Georgette whispered, willing herself not to retch at the very sight.

The next day it was discovered that a number of the youngest children in Georgette’s group had died in the night, whether from hunger or exhaustion or some illness their bodies were too weak to fight.

The others stood staring at the tiny piles of cloth, skin and bones.

‘Come on now. They have to be buried before we move on,’ the leader said. ‘They are small enough that we can put them together in one grave.’ He picked up a shovel and marked a spot. ‘Boys, start digging here.’

None of the youths moved.

‘I am weak,’ one muttered.

‘I need my strength just to keep walking,’ another begged.

The leader shouted and ordered and pleaded, but the boys averted their eyes. Finally, the leader threw down his shovel. That was the first time they left their dead in a shallow ditch, covered only lightly with soil and piles of old leaves.

The wild beasts will eat them tonight
, Georgette thought, as she lashed together some sticks to make a cross for the makeshift grave.
And perhaps ’tis fitting. In this terrible hunger we have become more like animals than humans
.

The group that marched on was sombre and gaunt.

Chapter Six

The marchers had to have at least the promise of food ahead, or they would lie down from weakness and die in the hundreds. Prophet Stephen sent off four youths on horseback, each in a slightly different direction, to search for any prospect of a meal. The crowd stumbled on listlessly in the hope of good news, resting frequently, prodded by their leaders to get up again and keep moving forwards.

Just as dusk fell, one of the scouts returned in energetic triumph, riding like a boy who had recently eaten his fill, astride a horse with sweet hay in its belly. The large and prosperous Abbey of Blois was less than two hours’ march away, and the abbot had undertaken to feed the holy Crusaders in the morning.

The scout related how he had been taken to a cavernous kitchen and plied with food by the monks. ‘The head cooks are twins,’ he went on, ‘such jolly fellows and as alike as two peas in a pod. They insisted on giving me seconds of everything and they –’

‘Enough about the cooks,’ Prophet Stephen snapped. ‘Spread the word among the Crusaders that tomorrow we will have a breakfast fit for a king
 . . .
or an abbot.’

The children received the news with relief, but the night was long. The next morning they covered the distance to the abbey as quickly as they were able.

Even the huge refectory where the monks ate every day was not big enough to seat so many, so thirty feeding stations had been set up on the grassy slope outside the abbey. Each one was manned by a monk standing behind a massive cauldron of porridge. The twin cooks were red-eyed from sleeplessness, having cooked through the night for their huge group of guests. But their smiles were broad as they moved from group to group, chortling at the hungry children whose grimy faces were barely visible behind the bowls raised to their mouths. There was enough for a second serving for each, but most of the Crusaders could not cram any more into their shrunken stomachs.

After they had eaten, the abbot led tierce outside rather than in the abbey so that they could all hear. He was an impressive man, intense and ascetic in looks, with a commanding, precise voice that carried across the slope. Their stomachs heavy, the Crusaders listened contentedly, but thought their own leader much more handsome as he stood confidently beside the stern abbot. Stephen had taken to wearing a peacock feather in his hat, and the sun danced in the iridescent turquoise plume.

After tierce the children rested in the sun on the slope, devoured fresh bread and a thick bean soup in the evening, and slept well through the night. The next morning they resumed their march after breakfast.

The jolly cooks had prepared vast quantities of food for their journey. They were made recklessly generous by their personal interest in a new recruit to the Crusade from their very own abbey. He was a tall boy, quiet and serious, wearing a new black hood that he repeatedly pulled forward to cover his face.

Chapter Seven

In the seven years that followed his removal as a child to the Abbey of Blois, Robert had almost no contact with other children. Instead of being mocked for his unblinking seriousness, he was now required to study and to assist his new guardian in his writing for up to twelve hours each day, interrupted only by meals and the routine of the Divine Office. He quickly adjusted to waking like the monks at 2 a.m. for the matins service followed by the lauds service. After a little sleep, he woke again at dawn to begin the day with the prime service. Then his duties began, punctuated by the services of tierce, then sext, then none, and ending on most days with vespers before dark. Sometimes the abbot needed him to take dictation after dinner, before compline. Only then was he free of work, but it was bedtime almost immediately. It always seemed he had just fallen asleep when he was woken at 2 a.m. to start again with matins. Through all those years, the abbot’s highest praise was a thin smile, and so Robert was proud when he earned that concession.

If he had a rare moment of free time, he loved to talk to the diverse travellers who stayed overnight in the abbey. They laughed at the boy’s eager questions, then marvelled at his quick grasp of the things they told him, from details of political intrigue to the scientific principles used to invent such useful things as hoists, and the great advantages of the Hindu numerals, brought to Europe by Arab traders and renamed Arabic numerals.

‘Now go and play, boy,’ one traveller finally ordered him. ‘At this rate, your brain will wear out before you are a man. Do you not know how to play at fencing or shoot at birds with a bow and arrow?’

Robert did not know how to play, but fortunately his intense mental world was relieved by two individuals whom the abbot did not deign to notice. The only adults who had ever shown him affection were near the bottom rung in the abbey: the jovial cooks in the monastery kitchen, Brother Puck and Brother Peter. These twins were uncomplicatedly devoted to each other and to their work. They loved food, whether cooking or eating it, and they loved God. What better work could they find in the world than to cook huge meals every day for the monastic servants of God?