Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade (50 page)

The group removed themselves from the chamber and joined their company waiting respectfully in the courtyard. All waited silently as Pieter asked Wil the question each dreaded. “So, do we wait and keep a death watch?”

The lad faltered, stunned by the sound of the words. Then, wishing for all the world to be by her side at the moment of her passing, Wil nodded.

But Karl disagreed, gently. “Brother, I would rather stay also. But you heard her tell us we needs go to the sea. I believe she truly wants us to go on. It was as if she had been given a vision.

“Besides, if we stay and keep a watch, she’ll surely hurry her own death so we can press on! It is her way.” He turned to Pieter. “By faith, what say you?”

The old man nodded, distracted by the girl’s baffling message. “Why the sea?” he wondered. “Why not Jerusalem or Palestine … and what of the garden?”

“But … but we cannot just leave her here alone,” Wil protested.

Karl looked around. The abbey seemed peaceful and filled with sweet smells. Flowers grew in every corner; the monks were caring. “She’d be so very happy here.” The boy sighed and looked at the others.

Anna stepped forward bravely. “Wil, I should like to stay. I am her friend and am yet weak m’self.”

But Pieter suddenly could not bear the thought of leaving Maria. “Wil,” he begged, “can y’not just give up this journey? Can we not all rest in this good place and remain with her until she passes? ”

Wil stared at Pieter, then his brother, and finally at Anna. “We will honor Maria’s wish; we can do little here but frustrate her by our staying.” Then, without saying another word, he walked back into the infirmary and knelt by his sister.

The lad stared at his sister for a long while. Memories of their lives melded into bittersweet until he pictured her face in the Verdi castle on that awful night. He whimpered and laid his cheek close to hers, and when her soft breath passed over his skin, he began to weep. He plunged his face into her body and rocked her tightly as tears poured from his eyes. “I am sorry, Maria,” he sobbed. “I am so very, very sorry. Please forgive me! Oh, Maria, Maria, please forgive me. I … I love you. I love you so very, very much.”

The child breathed faintly. She was in a deep, peaceful sleep, her soul preparing for its flight to the angels. Her lips were slightly purpled, her cheeks no longer flushed. Her hair lay beneath her head like a pillow of spun gold.

Karl entered and knelt on her other side. He, too, buried his head against her. His red curls pressed against her, his face burrowed into the straw of her mattress. His mind flew to Weyer and the days by the Laubusbach.
She
must
live!
he thought. The lad prayed to every heavenly thing, to the name of every saint he knew, to the angels, to the Holy Virgin, the Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Father of all. He raised up and ran his fingers along her withered arm. He took the cross of Georg that he had been carrying and set it by Maria’s side. “Love, sister, love will heal you … either here or in a better place.” He then took her cross and lifted his face to his brother’s. “Wil, we are right to go on,” he stated flatly. “By faith, brother, let us be on our way believing that we shall someday find her happy and dancing under the sun.”

It was enough. Wil nodded and the two bade Maria an affectionate farewell, each kissing her forehead. Then they emerged boldly into the sun-washed courtyard.

“We go!” announced Wil.

Pieter said nothing. He knew he could not abandon what was left of his valiant company, even for his most beloved little one. He walked to a quiet place away from all the others. There, in a garden rich with color, he sank to his knees and wailed, his worn heart butchered by a grief he had never known. His shrieks flew across the rooftops to the quiet lake below; they were like the anguished cries of Golgotha. Broken and shattered, Pieter fell facedown and mute upon the earth.

At midday the heavyhearted crusaders left Maria and a tearful Anna behind, and descended from Arona. They had traveled only a league southward, however, when they found themselves staring aimlessly across
Lago Maggiore
with little thought to their holy call. Karl looked wistfully at the wooden cross Maria had so faithfully carried and hoped they had made the right decision after all. He walked slowly to the priest, who was tossing pebbles aimlessly into the rippling water. “Pieter?”

The man wouldn’t speak.

“I do not demand a miracle for Maria, but I do dare pray for one.”

Pieter nodded.

The minstrel joined the pair and slowly gathered words to his lips.
“Padre,
my heart weighs heavy and I cannot bear this pain. These poor children …” He wiped the tears from his eyes and pulled on his beard. “I think I have never felt such loss; to see their graves along the shore …”

Pieter had no counsel left and was content to simply nod again. His spirit had been pressed beyond all resource.

Wil wandered far away from his comrades and stared at the green mountains that rose around the lake like well-muscled shoulders. The sky was a brilliant blue, the sun warm and the air sweet, but none were of comfort.
Indeed,
the lad pondered,
there is nary a rogue on this earth as wicked as I. I am not the man I thought m’self to be. I am cowardly, selfish, weak; I’ve no heart. How could I have hurt her so?
He slid his back against a tree trunk and sat in its cool shade. There his mind flew to images of his sister as an infant in his mother’s arms, then playing happily by the bakery ovens, or tending sick geese and picking flowers. Melancholy overtook the lad once more. “Dear, dear Maria,” he beseeched aloud. “Please, dear
schwester,
if y’can hear my words I beg y’hear this: I am so very, very sorry. Please forgive me.”

Frieda brought Pieter a wedge of cheese and some salted fish, then left him to his thoughts. He sat silently on the lakeshore watching the sun slide ever farther west. At last he walked to the water’s edge where he cupped a refreshing splash of water onto his face. Feeling revived, he then turned to survey his flock.
This shall not do,
he thought.
This shall not do at all.

Pieter’s voice turned all heads. “
Komm, meine kinder, komm
.” He extended his arms and waited as his flock drew near. He scanned their faces and smiled tenderly. “Where is Wil?” he asked. The children looked about and shrugged.

Gertrude pointed. “I thought I saw him climbing through those trees.”

“Heinz,” said Pieter, “fetch good Wil. Tell him we have a need of him.”

Heinz sprinted across the beach and disappeared into a wooded hillside.

“And as for you, my beloved,” Pieter continued, “we have bidden farewell to dear ones before. Poor Georg and Albert and Jost and Lukas and now all the Jons. Gunter, August, Richard, the others …”

“And my brother, Manfred,” blurted Frieda.

“Ah, dear one,” said Pieter, “yes, and our Manfred. But we cannot linger by this lake.”

“Onward!” said Karl at once. “’Tis time.”

“Aye!” echoed Otto. “They cannot have died for naught. They’d want it so.”

Pieter sighed. “My lambs, it gets some easier to walk, but I would not have you deceived. Other hardships do remain.” He looked at the sky and shook his head. “By m’measurement of the stars some nights past, I reckoned us clearly nearing the equinox. You needs know that the change in season shall bring a time of natural melancholy, especially in souls so hard-pressed as yours. The shortening hours call the humors of the body to produce black bile and our sadness may grow ever heavier.

“As a child I did love the crisp air of coming autumn and the fruits of harvest, but as I aged m’mind changed some. Now it seems ever more sad to me; a time when lightness and hope give way to shadows and thoughts of endings. It is the season when youth dies….”

Pieter began to tear a little. “Ah, yes, these are but the ramblings of a weary, old man in the winter of his own life. The
Secretum Secretorum
tells us, ‘From noonday till vespers, the melancholy humors are at their peak.’ And I see by the sun that we are at midday.”

Pieter turned to Benedetto, who was plucking aimlessly at his lute. “My good friend, do you know these lake parts very well?”

“I know something of them.”

“I believe it fair to say we’d all rather float than march. Might y’know how we might sail or row along this shore?”

Benedetto nodded. “Indeed, and if you could sail to Sesto Calende you could then drift south on the Ticino—all the way to Pavia.” He turned toward the water. “But, I ought tell you now, dear friends, I’ll not be traveling with you any longer.”

Karl was stunned. “You must! You’d be one of us now. And we need your songs.”

“Dear lad,” answered Benedetto quietly, “happy songs must come from a happy heart. I fear I would only sing what my heart now feels and there is not one happy ballad in it.”

Wil emerged from his refuge in time to hear Benedetto’s comments. “There is no heart heavier than mine own, minstrel. And I’ll press it onward.”

As Benedetto turned to face Wil, he saw a brokenness in the lad’s eyes, a shattering of the soul that had left its mark plainly. The minstrel hesitated, wrestling within himself. “This much will I do,” he offered. “I’ll seek out some means to float this lake and then decide.” With that, he turned and trotted toward the clay-clad rooftops of a small village in the distance.

Pieter realized the most important thing now was for each to be busy about some task. “Wil,” he whispered, “I suggest we make camp for the night. The sky is clear, the air is warm, and I think a good meal and deep sleep will help heal us all.”

Wil so directed his company. The
signore’s
gifts of pots, knives, flints, and sundry tools had made each evening’s camp more agreeable, and soon the children were hurrying about their duties.

Pieter had kept a keen eye on Wil and called him aside. “Might we speak for just a moment, lad? ”

Wil shrugged.

“I see the pain in your face, and I feel it as well.”

“You do not feel the pain I feel. You did not deny your own sister, nor are you a coward.”

Pieter placed his hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Wrong on each point, dear friend. I have failed more oft than most know. In my first battle I was so terrified that I hid on the ground as though I was slain! I have served my pride in secret ways … ways that I dread to be exposed. And while I did not betray a sister’s love, it is certain to me that had I a sister, I would not be above such a thing.”

Wil did not respond.

“Can y’not recall St. Peter’s denial of his Lord? And not only once, but thrice. And he was forgiven even that. The Father above loves you much, my dear son. You must believe that He forgives His children, always, and not because it is deserved. Methinks if forgiveness could be earned it might not be forgiveness at all, but rather a bartered reckoning of some sort.

“You are dearly loved, Wil; ne’er forget that. And you are not perfect; forget that neither. I am an old man and I oft imagine I would rather be right than be forgiven. Ah, but it has been good to see I am never ‘right’… always there is a quality of evil, of error, or pride that stains all I do. And, I deserve nothing! So, I’ve a need, Wil, a need of free forgiveness … always.”

Wil kept his eyes fastened on the ground. “I’ll never understand a God who allows such things as I have seen, and I’ve little heart to reach a hand toward Him.”

“Ja.
I know that struggle well. I’ve no answer for you lad, for His ways are His own, and we’ve not been called to grasp them nor empowered to do so. He asks for our trust, and methinks He ordains some mystery so that we learn to trust Him as He is … our Sovereign.”

“But I don’t want to trust Him!” blurted Wil. “I would rather work to trust m’self better.”

The old man nodded and leaned hard on his staff. “I tell you this, boy: Self-reliance is a merciless tyrant. It blinds the eyes; its appetite is never quenched and it never rests. I warn you, son: If you choose to trust yourself and not face your need, you shall surely spend your days in the grip of a dragon.”

To Pieter’s surprise and great joy, Wil’s jaw loosened and his shoulders lowered. The spirit within the boy had been nudged ever so slightly and a change had begun. He nodded humbly as he walked away.

The old man drew a deep breath through pinching nostrils and turned his face to the gentle blue lake that rippled in the light breeze of the late afternoon. His mind drifted to his little Maria and how she used to snuggle against him in the cold mountain air. He squeezed his eyes tightly and imagined her happily snuggled in the lap of her precious Jesus. Pieter turned back toward camp and to the meal now steaming in the pots above crackling flames. It was then that Karl approached him. “I am troubled, Pieter,” the boy said sadly.