Beloved Pilgrim (40 page)

"But how did you know that the woman Albrecht
left with was the knight he arrived with?" Elisabeth pursued.

"We kept our mouths shut and our ears open.
Sooner or later he mentioned your brother, Elias, of his passing,
of the missing armor."

She laughed. "He probably did not mention the
missing gold."

Maliha and her master exchanged looks. "He
said you promised him treasure, but when he went to get it, your
Reinhardt followed him and claimed it for his own."

She shuddered. "Please do not call him 'my
Reinhardt.' Well, I am sorry. If he is still in Byzantium, I will
try to make it up to him."

Andronikos shook his head. "He is gone. He
was with Welf, as I said, as well as a most charming man, a
troubadour of some renown, Duke William of Aquitaine. What a
talented lot the nobles of that land are. And a most extraordinary
woman, Ida, the Dowager Margravina of Austria."

Elisabeth sat up so quickly she knocked her
goblet of wine from its perch on her knee. "Ida? She was here?"

Maliha looked concerned and leaned to mop at
the dark red liquid soaking into the covers of the bed. "Do you
know her?"

"An extraordinarily beautiful woman."
Andronikos added, "if you go in for that sort of thing." He winked
at Albrecht. But as quickly he shot his attention to Elisabeth. She
had stood and was stepping around the low table. "What is
amiss?"

Elisabeth cried as she darted out of the
chamber, "Ida. She and her party are almost certainly headed into
disaster! I have to stop them!"

It felt strange riding alone along the roads
to Ancyra she had traversed months ago with the entire pilgrim
force. It chilled her to think that only a handful, no more than
six score, of the men, women and children who had marched, laughed,
argued, sung, complained, and breathed would ever see their
homelands again.

At her first stop to beg water and fodder for
Gauner she learned from wary villagers that not only had the
Nivenais force passed through, taking what little food the natives
of the region had left, but had passed through again heading back
the same direction. The peasants did not know why or where they had
gone. She knew she must retrace her steps and learn where they had
turned off. The only thing she was confident about was that they
had not returned to Constantinople or even Nicomedia. She would
have intercepted them if they had.

She quizzed the peasants and the people
further and learned that no second group had passed through the
village. So Ida's party clearly had learned what she had not and
followed the Nivenais along the same course. If she had stopped
sooner for provender, she would not have wasted time in her
pursuit.

Retracing her steps back through what was now
well within Byzantine territory, she finally learned that the
Nivenais had taken the road south to Dorylaeum. The later party had
followed. Turning her own mount in the same direction, she worried
that the two parties, almost six weeks separated, would make easy
targets for the strengthening armies of Kilij Arslan and his now
staunch ally, Malik Ghazi. She could only pray they had met
somewhere along the way, at Dorylaeum or Konya, and combined
forces.

She thought about what Andronikos had told
her. The body of pilgrims, which included the Margravina, had
arrived in Constantinople not long after the Nivenais left to
overtake her own force. The last group had not hurried after them.
Petty jealousies played a part in this decision as they had with
Raymond, Blois, and the others. William hated Count Raymond of
Toulouse, for his duchess was the daughter of Raymond's older
brother and should have inherited the county. Duke Welf was a
bitter rival of the Holy Roman Emperor and had no wish to ally
himself with the Constable of the Emperor, Conrad. So while the
Count of Nevers made haste on the journey where he hoped to combine
forces with Raymond and his pilgrims, the Aquitainians and
Bavarians had rested in the area across the Bosporus from
Constantinople and when they left headed to Dorylaeum to make their
way south to Syria and Palestine. One party, including a man named
Eckhardt who was chronicling the pilgrimage, took ship directly to
Palestine.

So, she realized, the Nivenais must have
arrived at Ancyra, expecting to be directed to Raymond's location,
but no one there knew anything about his whereabouts. Elisabeth
thought it was suspicious that Count William did not even learn the
direction they had taken only a few weeks before. The Nivenais must
have assumed that the first group of pilgrims pursued their
original course, south to Konya, so they headed in that direction
as well, taking a roundabout path. She could only hope that their
backtracking allowed the last group to catch up and combine forces.
The last was well equipped, much better than the Nivenais, but
neither group could face what Elisabeth had seen. The Seljuk Turk
and Danishmend armies were greater still.

She urged Gauner on and on, but finally
realized he could not keep up the pace forever. He may be a
destrier, a huge stout horse, but his very size could be his
downfall if ridden too hard, too fast and too long. Killing her
horse would not help her desperate pursuit. She decided to pause in
a small village whose church tower she had spied, to rest Gauner
and herself and to get whatever tidings she could.

In the small town she found more wary people
who only agreed to feed and care for Gauner for the silver she
proffered. In her headlong rush to follow Ida, Andronikos had
forced on her a small purse that clinked with coins. "I am indebted
to you so much already," she protested.

He shook his head. "You brought Albertos. I
could never repay you for that."

She accepted the purse, and all along the way
she was glad she had had coin to wrest what little information the
people could offer.

She tried to ask the man who led Gauner off
about the pilgrim armies who should have passed by here. The man
would not speak, but simply gestured to the small church in the
center of the village.

"What? I know they were Christians. But did
they pass here?"

He pointed more insistently. She followed his
gaze and shrugged. She could do with a little prayer even if it
wasn't in the Latin tradition.

As she approached the church she noticed a
man in clothing more like her own than the locals'. She peered
through the glare of midday sun. She was startled when a voice
called out in German, "Elias? It cannot be! You are dead!"

It was Hans, the man who had helped her and
Albrecht escape Reinhardt's clutches. He sat on the step of the
church, his right leg straight out in front of him, splinted and
bandaged.

"Hans, how did you get here? What happened to
you?"

The man cocked his head, recognizing his own
dialect of German. He stared into Elisabeth's face, searching it
for some explanation. All at once his eyes grew round. "My God, I
cannot believe it. It's you. It's the Lady Elisabeth. A knight?" He
stared her up and down, then asked, "Do you have any food?"

She sat down next to him and placed her helm
on the step on her other side. "I do," she affirmed and untied the
leather bag she had at her belt, pulled it open and reached in. She
brought out a small packet wrapped in oiled cloth, opened it and
offered its contents to Hans. He snatched the whole packet from her
hands and started to shove food into his mouth without pausing to
identify it.

"Wine?" he said through a full mouth.

"Water," she said simply, "and lucky to have
that."

He shrugged. "Water I can get. Although . . .
" He looked at her pleading, "not until they get around to me. Can
you give me some of yours?"

She pulled the wineskin from her belt and
gave it to him. "It's not good water. Probably no better than they
have here."

Elisabeth tried to question him while he
polished off most of her food. He waved her questions away,
indicating that he would eat first. Popping one last morsel into
his mouth, he said around it, "I'm with the Duke's army . . . or I
was. Duke Welf. Reinhardt tossed me out when . . . " He looked up
at her angrily. "Now that reminds me, you were supposed to reward
me for . . . "

She put up a hand. "I know all about it.
Reinhardt caught you looking for the gold I told you about. I am
sorry. I will make it up to you somehow. I promise."

"How do you . . . where did you . . . where
is Albrecht?" he finally finished.

"Constantinople. He was wounded at
Merzifon."

"Merzifon?" Hans asked.

"You don't know about Merzifon? Well, I
suppose you wouldn't. Never mind. What happened to you?" She
indicated his leg.

Hans looked down at it. "My horse fell on me.
They had to leave me here, God rot them." He looked back at her.
"Reinhardt was just as glad when you disappeared. He was your
husband and that meant the estates were his free and clear.
Everyone assumed you and Albrecht had gone away to stay. He had men
looking for you for some time, secretly, so he could kill you both
and make sure you did not suddenly turn up. He was suspicious of
me, so he did not send me. He did find something out, though. One
of his men came back from the Danube with some news that made him
laugh. No one told me what it was."

Elisabeth grinned sardonically. "Then he got
what he wanted. He never wanted me, not as a wife anyway." She
shrugged, "So be it. What about my father? Has there been any
word?"

He considered her speculatively. "So you have
not found him. That was the one thing Reinhardt was most uneasy
about. He did not want to get your estates only to learn that you
never had inherited them in the first place." He shrugged. "The
only thing we ever heard about your father and his party was that
they traveled farther west and get a ship at Marseilles. Don't
remember why."

That was the first real intelligence she had
gotten about her father after all this time. She realized that his
heading west and sailing from Marseilles was the reason she had
never learned anything. They had taken entirely different paths.
Who could know what happened after that?

"I have to take a piss. Will you help me get
up?" Hans asked. She willingly put her arm under his and helped him
stand. Acting as a crutch, she helped him a short distance
away.

He looked at her crotch. "How do you manage .
. . ?" he began.

"I manage. Can you?" She gave him a
challenging look.

"You've changed," he said. As he relieved
himself, she looked away and chuckled.

"You don't know the half of it."

He pointed to a bench under a tree and said,
"Let's get some shade. This fucking place is like an oven. Or
Hell."

In the little shade they shared their
stories. Elisabeth refused to be led into talking about her
transformation. Hans finally stopped trying. She also kept her
details of the massacre at Merzifon to a minimum.

He told her that after Reinhardt had
dismissed him, he had found a place as a squire to the Ritter
Conrad von Niederhof who was serving as a knight in Duke Welf's
army. The old Duke had had an illustrious career as a war leader,
but now he wanted to end his days fighting the heathens in the Holy
Land. His party joined the Duke of Aquitaine's and another
commander named Hugh de Vermandois. Yes, Ida was with them. She
brought along the Archbishop of Salzburg as her chaperone." The
last word was spoken bitterly.

Hans made no pretense of his opinion of that.
"She's drop-dead gorgeous, especially for an old woman, but she'd
no business coming on pilgrimage with us. She's been trouble every
step of the way."

Elisabeth was sitting forward with her
forearms on her thighs, staring at the dry ground between her feet.
"I heard you were all trouble."

Andronikos had had time only to tell her of
the arrival of the Aquitainian-Bavarian pilgrims, how they were out
of control throughout Byzantine territory and how Alexios had
dispatched Pecheneg mercenaries to escort them directly to
Nicomedia. The pilgrims engaged the Pecheneg in battle. It was only
when the Dukes of Aquitaine and Bavaria swore to the Basileus that
they would keep the unruly force in control that he let them
proceed. Most were escorted to Nicomedia, but some of the
commanders stayed in Constantinople. I got a sweet billet with some
no-balls high mucky-muck."

Elisabeth, who had said nothing about her own
billet in Constantinople, let the insult to her benefactor go. "So
when did they move on? The pilgrims you came with, I mean."

"They were heading to Konya. Thought that
Count William would have taken it by then. We were getting low on
everything. The Nivenais bastards already got all the food there
was to get out of these pigs." He indicated the people who moved
about on their daily chores around him.

"How long ago?" she insisted.

"A fortnight maybe? The days go by much the
same here. You are going to take me with you, aren't you?" His eyes
begged her to say yes.

She looked at him. "I cannot now, but I
promise I will come back for you. I owe you at least that."

He looked resigned. "You promise," he said
tentatively.

"On my honor as a knight of the Cross." She
made the sign on her breast, then looked away to hide the look that
crossed her features when she realized how little honor she had
seen among those knights.

His look was sardonic, but he kept his
thoughts about her knighthood to himself.

Elisabeth arrived at Konya to find it all but
deserted. From a mullah in a nearby village she learned that indeed
Count William of Nevers had tried to take the city, but failed and
moved on. His eyes burned with pride as he recounted that tale, but
they grew dismal when he went on. "Then we saw the bigger army.
Most of us fled. But we took all the food with us. And everything
else we could carry. When they got here the place was of no use to
them, the Infidels. They got a taste of what Allah, may he be
praised, has in store for them. For you as well, dog of a
Christian."