Beloved Pilgrim (6 page)

"My children, it is a mortal sin to take an
innocent life, whatever the reason. It is also a mortal sin to seek
to end one's life deliberately. Your mother and I are both in
desperate danger of our immortal souls. I did not want to ease her
misery that way, but she pleaded with me with her eyes. It should
have been cruel not to do as she wished. But God does not make
exceptions." He saw Elisabeth leaned forward to speak and waved her
to subsidence. "No, hear me out. His Holiness Pope Urban promised
complete absolution for all sins, past present and future, if a man
or woman would go on his holy crusade to Jerusalem. I did not tell
you, but when we laid your mother to rest, I had her heart removed.
I will go to Jerusalem. I will take it with me. That is all I can
do to expiate both our sins."

Elias sat on his right, his head bowed,
listening, while Albrecht was not far away standing with a pitcher
of wine. Only Elisabeth looked directly into her father's face.

Sigismund turned to face Elias. "My son," he
said in a grim voice, "I need you to stay here and protect our
interests. You cannot come with me."

Elisabeth closed her eyes with relief. When
she opened them again, she saw Elias's stricken look.

"Not go with you?" he protested.

Sigismund's look was severe. "Do not argue
with me, son. I am firm on this. You have a future, and you must
prepare. Don't throw your life away on something so nebulous. Stay
here and let the steward show you how to maintain our property. I
will knight you before the household fighters leave and I. If God
wills it . . . " He paused in his statements to chuckle darkly at
his own use of the crusaders' motto. "If God wants me to, I will
return as soon as I can. Reinhardt will probably come back about
the same time. If you have done well, Elias, I will turn the
running of this estate over to you. Elisabeth will go with her
husband to his estates. I will take my place again in Emperor
Henry's service."

Elisabeth finally found her own voice. "When
will you go, Father?"

Her brother asked, "And which route will you
take?"

Sigismund sighed and sat back in his heavy,
ornate chair. "The others who crossed the Alps shall have long been
in the Holy Land. I cannot catch up to them but must go as directly
there as I may. I believe we shall travel overland, east through
the Balkans and down into Byzantium. By the time we arrive there we
should be able to get some news about where Eustace and Godfrey of
Boulogne are. They may be in Jerusalem already, in which case I
will do what I must there, find Reinhardt and plan to return."

He shook his head at his son's resentful
look. He put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "You will have
your chance, Elias. There is never any shortage of wars."

Elias nodded resignedly.

As Sigismund prepared for departure, Elias
and Albrecht threw themselves into serving him and his knights.
Elisabeth had taken the role of lady of the manor and turned those
shaky skills as best she could to help provision the departing
company.

She happened to be in a corridor when Elias
came toward her from the far end. They stopped and looked at each
other. "There is something wrong about all this," she stated
without explanation.

Elias shook his head. "I know. I should be
going as his squire."

Elisabeth frowned at him. "You are so fixed
on your grievance, you are not paying attention to what's going on
here."

He started to protest, but the truth of her
insight struck him. He bowed his head. "You are right. What are you
feeling?"

She put a hand on his shoulder. "I am not
sure I can put it into words. I know Father truly does mean to take
mother's heart to Jerusalem, to ensure that they can be together in
heaven, but something tells me Father does not mean to come
back."

He stared at her, his eyebrows knitted. "But
he said he would. Why would he lie?"

Elisabeth shrugged. "Maybe he doesn't realize
it himself."

Her brother looked away as if thinking the
problem through. "I don't see what we can do," he finally said.

Elisabeth's face showed that she agreed.

The day before Sigismund's household fighters
were to leave for the east, he conducted the ceremony that made his
son a knight. After a mass in the church where Elias had spent the
night on his knees praying to be worthy, Albrecht dressed him in
his finest clothes. They went down to the hall together, Albrecht
ever at Elias's left shoulder.

Sigismund stood just below the dais dressed
in his own finest and holding a naked sword. Elisabeth waited
beside him. Father Boniface waited until Elias knelt before his
father and Albrecht stepped back to a respectful distance.
Elisabeth glanced at the boy, seeing the pride shining in his eyes
as he looked at Elias's kneeling figure. She smiled. Father
Boniface intoned a blessing and then himself retreated.

Sigismund looked down at his son's bowed
head. "Elias, my son, I have ever been proud of you. Even though my
many long absences have deprived you of some of what you deserved
in your young life, you stayed stalwart, patient, and virtuous. You
stood by your dear mother throughout it all. That is indeed the
character of a true knight."

He raised the naked blade and performed the
ritual of knighting in silence. He had tears in his eyes. When he
was finished, he bade Elias stand. Somberly holding up the sword
with the pommel toward his son, he proclaimed, "Take your sword,
Sir Knight, and see to it you wield it in honor and justice."

Elisabeth heard the priest's quiet "Amen."
She watched as Elias took the sword, kissed the place where hilt
met blade to create a cruciform, and then slowly slipped it into
the empty scabbard at his side. He struck his heels together and
bowed to his father. Albrecht stepped to him and draped a mantle
about his shoulders. Elias stood, dignified, handsome and
magnificent.

One final feast marked the occasion and the
departure of most of the fighting men at Winterkirche. It was a
somber affair, so much grief part of all the decisions that had
been made.

In the early morning much of the same group
of people assembled in the courtyard. Sigismund sat his destrier
and watched the servants carry a richly decorated casket containing
the late Adalberta's heart to a cart and lay it carefully within.
Father Boniface pronounced a blessing over the casket and then
turned to do the same for the mounted company.

Sigismund looked at his son and daughter
where they stood on the steps to the hall. "God bless you and keep
you, my children."

Elias lifted his chin and assured, "I shall
not disappoint you, my father."

"I know you shall not," was all his father
could say in reply. He turned his eyes to rest on his daughter. "I
. . . I . . . " His voice broke on a suppressed sob.

"I know, Father. I know," she replied.

They did not know what to expect in the way
of tidings from their father. Whenever a traveler passed through
their lands they invited him in to learn whatever they could about
what transpired in the world. There was little news of either the
crusade in Palestine or their father and his party.

Elias found himself sternly summoned to
Emperor Henry's court. He told Elisabeth when he returned that the
Emperor had angrily inquired why Sigismund had gone without seeking
his leave beforehand. Elias was at a loss to explain, other than to
say that his father assumed the earlier blessing was in force. He
was asked to and gladly agreed to swear his own fealty to Henry,
though the man seemed less than confident in a knight so young. In
fact, he seemed reluctant to believe the boy had in fact been
knighted.

Albrecht learned from other squires that the
Emperor was angry that so many of his best knights and barons had
chosen to go on crusade, leaving him in an uneasy situation.
Nevertheless, he could not refuse them leave, and avoid the wrath
of the Church. His stance with Pope Urban was shaky as it was from
his years of opposing the Holy See.

In the meantime, Elias spent his time with
the manor steward learning what he needed to know to maintain the
estates. He continued to work with the sword master, Dagobert, now
graduated to real weapons. In what time was available he
surrendered to his sister's demands and showed her what he learned.
She and Albrecht spent time practicing.

Feeling suspended, Elisabeth found herself
returning to Sister Magdalena's cottage time and again. She found
the older woman's simple, quiet acceptance of the girl's moods
healing. Magdalena never tried to change how Elisabeth felt, what
she felt, but listened to her frustrations, her fears, and her
grief. She knew that Elisabeth after so much abandonment needed the
one sure thing, her friendship.

Not that Elisabeth did not seek advice and
reassurance. Some days she fired a barrage of questions and
challenges at the woman.

"What if Elias leaves? What do I do if
Reinhardt comes back? What do I do if my father never returns? Why
must I remain when they all leave?"

Magdalena's sole response to all these
questions was, "You will do what you will do when the time
comes."

Some news began to trickle in, but it was
months old by the time it reached Bavaria. There was nothing
whatever about Sigismund and his party, but they learned that in
the Fall of 1097 the European forces under Eustace and Godfrey of
Boulogne had arrived at the great city of Antioch. Other nobles,
including the Norman giant Bohemond and Raymond of Saint Gilles,
Count of Toulouse, had joined them in Constantinople. The last
anyone knew was that they were besieging Antioch, with no hope in
sight of breeching the massive walls.

Elisabeth gaped when she heard that Bohemond,
the scion of the Norman Guiscard dynasty in southern Italy, was in
effect the real leader of the crusader armies. He was notorious for
being the sword arm of his late father in trying to wrest control
of Byzantium. "And the Byzantine Emperor agreed?" she asked,
astonished.

The traveling priest who brought this news
shrugged. "It seems so. He is a masterful leader of men."

It was summer of the year 1100 when Elias
asked his sister to come with him to the church where their
mother's body, if not her heart, was entombed.

Her brother turned to Elisabeth, taking her
hands in his. He glanced at Albrecht, nodded, and then turned back.
"Elli, Albrecht and I are going to go to the Holy Land to look for
Father and to pray for him and Mother at the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher."

Elisabeth stepped back involuntarily, pulling
her hands out of his. With her fingertips to her lips, she
exclaimed, "No! You can't!"

Elias's beautiful countenance showed his
regret as he glanced over at Albrecht.

"Well if you must go, take me with you!" she
said sharply, putting her arms tight around her own breasts.

Her brother arched his eyebrows. "Believe me,
I thought about just that. But, no, it is not a safe place for a
woman of your station."

She glanced from Elias to his squire and then
back. "I can fight. You know I can," she retorted.

The indulgent look that drove her mad was on
his face. "You can also be captured, raped and held for
ransom."

It was not the response she had expected. She
was not prepared to counter the assertion with any intelligence.
Instead she said lamely, "Great ladies go to the Holy Land all the
time."

"Name one," Elias said, simply and
firmly.

She opened her mouth to reply, but no names
came to her. She supposed there must be women of rank who made the
pilgrimage but even had she thought of one, she knew all that had
ended when the crusaders brought open war to the Holy Land.

Her brother watched her face as she struggled
with finding a reason he should take her with him. "I will make
sure you are well protected here. You won't be alone. And I need
you to look after Winterkirche while we are gone."

The word "we" caused her to shoot a furious
glare at Albrecht. She wanted to snap something about their just
wanting to be alone together, but she knew better and turned back
to Elias. "Don't patronize me, Elias. You know better than that."
She turned and hurried back to the hall.

The two young men stayed out of her way for
the rest of the day. In the evening, as long affection told Elias
she would, Elisabeth thawed and came to where he and his squire sat
by the fire in the hall.

"When will you leave?" she asked the two in a
quiet voice.

Albrecht's eyes sparkled as he met his
lover's knowing smile.

Elias said, "We will want to get over the
Alps by the time real winter sets in. So sometime before
Michaelmas."

Only two months, she groaned inwardly. "But
the fighting may be over by the time you get to Jerusalem."

He shrugged. "I guess we will see. There has
been little word has made it here. If they are still fighting, we
shall join in. If they have taken Jerusalem by now, we will be
there to help keep it safe."

Looking with trepidation between the two
men's faces, Elisabeth said, "You mean to stay there, then?" She
caught the look they gave each other. "You do! Damn you, Elias, you
don't mean to come back!"

He and his squire looked down at their hands.
He mumbled, "We don't really know. We have not planned that
far."

Elisabeth, still standing, glared at her
brother. Slowly her face softened. "There is no longer anything
here for you . . . except wealth and estates..." she added
acidly.

Elias frowned at her. She shook her head,
resigned, and took a seat on a stool. "I know, I know." Her
thoughts turned to her betrothed. Perhaps he was already dead. In
that case she would stay on here and grow happily old alone, the
mad widow of Winterkirche. The thought almost brought a smile to
her lips.