Crusade (11 page)

The same boy ate first and began the story of their adventure first.

‘We managed to prise our way into two of the stone houses,’ he began. ‘There was an old man with his woman huddled in one, and parents with three Jewish brats in the other.

‘We started with the old man. Dragged him outside, and his wife too, and pulled off his smock and breeches. You should have seen him standing there naked, the old frog. But he wouldn’t acknowledge Jesus as the Lord, no matter how much we hit and kicked him. Why, I pulled so hard on his disgusting long yellowed beard that big chunks of it came out in my hand.

‘Then the father of the three children left his family and rushed at me. Oh, we gave him a good beating. How dare he touch a Christian with his unclean hands? We hit him with our sticks from all sides –’

‘– and when he fell down we kicked him again and again,’ interjected another boy.

‘He didn’t give in, even when we all piled on, but when his children and wife ran up and screamed and cried, he stopped struggling and said he would do what we wanted.’

‘What did you want him to do?’ one of the younger children asked, wide-eyed.

‘Well, we made him kneel –’

‘Hah, we grabbed his hair and pulled him from the ground to his knees, the heretic!’

‘– and we made him pray to Jesus.’

‘At first he hesitated, as if we were teaching him the Devil’s own words,’ interjected another big boy.

The leader took back the story, ‘So I helped by punching him before each word. It was funny – first we gave him a word, then I punched hard, then the wife and children screamed, then he repeated the word. All the way through an entire Hail Mary.’

‘Did the old woman cry?’

‘Nah, her eyes were closed all the time and she was praying in their strange Jewish tongue. So I slapped her really hard and she fell to the ground. She shut up after that.’

Georgette’s stomach heaved. She glanced questioningly at Gregor. He had been silent throughout the telling and would not look at her now. His pottage was untouched. Suddenly, he stumbled to his feet and went off alone to sleep.

Another boy left early too. He was not one who had gone on the expedition, but the tall and quiet boy who led the hours. When he had heard the part about the Hail Mary and the beating, he slipped away into the woods, where his dark form was lost among the trees. Georgette thought she heard vomiting, but maybe she was mistaken. The laughing around the fire was loud and excessive, almost hysterical.

When they started marching again the next day, Gregor seemed to edge away every time Georgette approached him. And indeed she was not sure what she was going to say to him. She certainly couldn’t ask him the questions she had been asking Jesus every waking hour since she had heard the boys’ account of their adventure.

She decided to leave Gregor alone and let him work out his mood on his own. That method had always worked at home, but this mood was a strange one. It wasn’t that he seemed angry. In fact, Gregor had acted this way only once before that she could remember, and it took her a while to recollect the occasion. It was when she and Patrice had found the bleeding stray dog. That was the dog she had helped Father David to stitch up, earning praise for her steadiness. Meanwhile, Gregor had shrunk from contact with her in just this kind of way. Later he had surprised her by asking if the dog would be all right. In fact, he seemed to know of the dog’s wounds before she told him.

This time it took two long days until he sought her out. One morning, he fell back to walk beside her on the stony road, and in silent agreement, both of them edged off to the side a little so that they could talk unheard. His face was blotchy and unhealthy, and there were black shadows under his eyes.

‘What ails you, Gregor?’ she asked.

It took a while for him to reply.

‘I helped beat up that Jew man,’ he said.

As Georgette raised her eyes to his, he added defensively, ‘That was the only way we could get him to pray to Jesus.’

He went on,

‘It was when he was repeating the Hail Mary. I beat him with a cudgel for hesitating, and when he finally finished it, he stared straight at me with the strangest look. I think he cast a spell on me. I have been feeling poorly ever since.’

Georgette had no words to reply. They walked on silently, and they did not speak about that night again.

Gregor had caught a chill during the damp cool nights and he continued to feel poorly over the next several days. He had little appetite and he tired easily. At night, a deep, hacking cough kept him awake and left him weak and sore. He was not alone in his illness. Many of the Crusaders coughed persistently throughout the night, one setting off the others until they sounded like a discordant brass chorus. Georgette tried to keep him warm and hand-fed him hot broth, but nothing she did seemed to help.

After four days, Patrice appeared at her side, disobeying her exasperated group leader’s command to stop her gallivanting and remain with her group at all times. She had heard of Gregor’s ill health through another child from their home village, and she had begged an old crone they passed on the road for a few sprigs of tansy and chamomile. Georgette remembered Father David boiling those herbs into a soothing hot drink for a child who was coughing severely, and she made the brew with haste. But the herbs hadn’t worked for that child and they didn’t work for Gregor. He coughed so roughly that he spat up thick blood.

Georgette stayed awake at Gregor’s side that night, feeding the fire and trying to persuade him to drink the bitter tonic. There was no moon, and the only light came from the twisting red tongues of the fire, writhing and choking on the damp twigs she fed it and smoking constantly, malevolently.

Georgette felt more alone than she had ever been before. She had thought they would all care for one another and crusade as a loving group united in Christ, but that atmosphere had seeped away after the first few days of cold and shortages of food. Now your blanket was as likely to be stolen as a coin lying on a highway, and Georgette saw many older youths who seemed to be using more blankets than they had brought on their journey, while younger ones lay shivering on the spruce boughs they used for bedding, wrapped only in their cloaks.

Fortunately, Gregor still had his blanket from home. She wound her own blanket around him too, but hurriedly loosened and reshaped the wrapping because he resembled a corpse in a shroud. Some time before dawn, his breathing eased and his coughing lessened. Georgette prayed her thanks; the tonic must have helped finally. Now she could rest for a while before the others arose. She lay down close to Gregor, took his hand in hers, and gave way to the exhaustion that was turning her body to lead. She slept.

About three hours later, the bustle of the Crusaders preparing to get on the road again seeped into Georgette’s consciousness. She kept her eyes closed, wanting desperately to sleep on and on and on. When she was little, she used to fall asleep in the afternoons in Father David’s hut while he taught the village boys. Wherever she dropped off, under the wooden table, or on a bench in the corner, she would always wake to find herself on soft straw, covered by a warm cape, and the priest would bring her a little milk to drink before she arose. How she wished the kindly old man was near to look after her now, to cover her against the morning cool, and especially to rub her hand, which was numb and sore from remaining in one position for hours. Groaning, she pulled it away, and felt someone’s fingers dropping from her own. Heavy. Cold. In an instant she was awake and bending over her brother’s chest. There was no movement, and his lips were icy.

A wail tore through the group. ‘Mother Mary!’ Her head thrown back, arms stretched up to Heaven, Georgette cried out, ‘Send him back, Mother Mary! Send my brother back to me!’

The group leader hurried over and put his own ear to Gregor’s chest. He forced Gregor’s half-open eyes closed and stood again.

‘He died a martyr to the Holy Cause,’ he pronounced. Turning away, he told some of the older boys to borrow a shovel from whoever had used it last. ‘And dig a longer hole than last time,’ he ordered them. ‘The boy was tall.’

Worse than his rough practicality was the past tense that he used.
Was tall . . . Was tall . . . Was tall
,
echoed in Georgette’s mind as she threw herself flat across Gregor, clutching his stiff, cold shoulders. She would not let them put him under the ground. It was not possible that he was dead.

A few girls came over to pat her back awkwardly. ‘Don’t let those boys steal your brother’s blanket when they bury him,’ one warned, and Georgette wailed louder.

Guilt pressed like a laden pack on her back. Not only had she deserted her father, but she had allowed his only son to die. If she had found the herbs earlier, maybe he would have lived. If she hadn’t fallen asleep, maybe she could have shaken him back to life.

Never before had she dwelled in such blackness. The dark earth pulled her powerfully and she wanted to sink down and never rise again.

And then she heard words, not spoken by any human soul, but travelling through her body like warmed cider given to one who is frozen. The words dissolved her pain, covered over her raw wound like a soothing poultice.
Yea, though I walk in the valley of Death, Yet will I fear no evil.

Georgette felt light and free, as if a hand had removed an oppressive weight and she was aloft in a foreign atmosphere. Smoothly, in one movement, she rose to her knees, bending her head over her clasped hands. Now she was murmuring, the words emerging from her lips, but the human sound was only a vehicle for enunciating what was pronounced with great love in her head. Her sobbing ceased and she only hiccupped now and again, held in serene rapture.

Two boys came and carried away her brother’s body and still she murmured, motionless. The others whispered, but none dared disturb her. The boy in a black cowl who led the hours had been drawn by the anguished wail. Now he stood some way behind Georgette and bowed his own head in the presence of her faith.

When the group’s leader summoned her to the new grave, she walked calmly to her brother’s brief funeral. She answered ‘Amen,’ crossed herself, placed a twig sprouting with new leaves on the upturned clods of soil, and joined the Crusaders as they departed.

A few children followed her closely for a while, hoping to witness some manifestation of the Divine after her unusual behaviour at the side of her brother’s body, but her face was so ordinary, her manner so humble, that they soon lost interest. Only the one wearing the black cowl continued to follow her, but at a distance.

Chapter Eleven

As the journey turned into months, the irregularity of food, the exhaustion of continuous travel and the lack of shelter all took their toll.

‘Another three slipped away last night,’ Patrice informed Georgette one morning. ‘They’re stupid not to stay with the Crusade. They’ll never get home alone.’

‘Perhaps they’ll find work in a nearby village,’ suggested Georgette. She was more concerned about the Crusaders they had been forced to abandon in various villages along the way because they were too weak to walk. Who knew whether the villagers would be kind enough to nurse them back to health?

The original system of organisation was no longer closely observed. Leaders did not recognise all the members of their groups. No one knew how many young Crusaders there were in total. Some said there were one or two thousand. Others swore the number must be higher than five thousand. At times, there was a chaotic lack of supervision and order. Silently, Robert watched the confusion.

By now the Crusaders were travelling through the miles of forests that blanketed the middle of France. Those who remained were toughened by their travels and more experienced in finding food and shelter. They were thin and tired, but their determination burned bright.

In the thick forests, wild boar were a common sight, roaming freely and rooting for acorns in the fallen leaves with loud snuffles and grunts. The boys went off on hunting parties, returning triumphantly with bristly pigs hanging between them on stakes. One day Patrice appeared in the train of the boys, dancing and twirling. There was blood on her hands and forearms and a streak on her face.

Georgette exclaimed, ‘Patrice, you look like a
 . . .
like a savage. Where on earth have you been? And where did that blood come from?’