Quest of Hope: A Novel (4 page)

Jost paused. Satisfied his point had been made, he relaxed and a smile lifted the corners of his lips. “Now, one more thing ‘fore I leave for m’hed! Hear me, ‘tis important.” He turned to Arnold. “You, boy, have y’not wondered why you are spared the plough?”

Arnold shrugged nonchalantly.

“And you, Baldric, why is it you are the woodward’s helper? When I was your age I was shearing wool and tending the demesne on boon-labors! You! Ach … you spend your summers in the shade of tall oak whilst others sweat.

“Not a single one of you half-wits has thought to ask why I am now a carpenter’s helper instead of a miserable shepherd like my father. Well, ‘tis a reason for these things. It is enough to say that a few years back I caught the abbey’s prior and Runkel’s steward cheating with the tax scales. I made short work of them! I found a good monk to be my witness, then I marched to the abbot. Well, you should’ve seen the two squirm. In an hour I had a pledge to buy m’silence, but I was not bought cheaply!

“The abbot thought it best to muzzle me with some sweets. Kurt and I were released from duties as shepherds to earn a better wage with the carpenters, and I was given land that I can pass to the next. ‘Tis how we’ve our half-hide.”

“Ja?
You say ‘our’ half-hide but it will pass to Kurt,” griped Baldric.

“The new way is for the eldest to get all and I so pledged. But ‘tis Kurt, not you, who ploughs, scythes, and threshes, and hell pay the tax. There’ll be no more talk of it.”

Jost laid his hand on Baldric’s shoulder. “But hear me, lad. This is the way that I saved you from the sheep herds and set you into the forest that you love. And when the old woodward is dead you are to be the next.” He turned to Arnold. “And you shall be forester in time!”

Arnold smirked and nudged Baldric. The two, in alliance, could work the trees to give them more than shade.

Jost raised the parchment high. “The abbot vowed another thing and sealed it under God on this scroll. He pledged that my eldest son’s grandsons would be instructed in the abbey school. This means if Heinrich sires sons they shall sit under the monks’ lindens and learn of things that might yet set their families free!” He handed the parchment over to Kurt who stared at it in disbelief.

Ignoring the shadowed scowls of his brothers he embraced his father and exclaimed, “Such a miracle does bring hope to life!”

The hovel became quiet. Arnold and Baldric settled in a corner grumbling and whispering together. Soon enough, the family tired. The night had grown long and it was time to bid farewell. Jost and Sieghild left first with a few words of thanks. Baldric and Arnold hung their hooded, fur cloaks atop their shoulders, and when the door shut and Jost was beyond hearing, Baldric turned toward Kurt. Speaking from the dark recesses of his hood he said, “M’thanks for the meal, brother. Good fortune with little Heinz and his special gift.” He pulled Kurt close to his face and then growled, “You and your brood are favored, ‘tis surely unjust!”

Wisely, Kurt said nothing. Arnold flung open the door and a blast of frigid air rushed in, sweeping sparks and glowing ashes across the straw floor. With a few grunts and angry growls the unhappy guests stepped into a fresh falling snow and hurried away along the footpaths of Weyer.

Chapter 2

SAINTS AND SINNERS

T
he patient village bore the cold of yet another winter upon its snow-laden shoulders. Ever faithful to the sure and steady passage of time, it served with other things certain: the sun, the moon and stars, the labors of the wind, the habits of beasts, and the ways of men. The land lay silent beneath the snow, awaiting the appointed time to once again yield its fertile bosom to the plough and pick of weary, calloused hands.

Weyer was an ancient community, settled in the shadows of the distant past by wandering Celts and Frankish tribesmen. Lubentius of Trier, a faithful monk who brought the first light of Christianity to the smoky village, had long since chased its pagan gods into the dark forests. Then, in the Year of Grace 790, Charlemagne granted the monks of distant Prüm a large, triangular manor of land marked at its easternmost point by the tiny village. Those monks soon established a new cloister to shepherd the land and its peasant folk.

A soaring hawk would see the haphazard collection of cottages, sheds, barns, and workshops that lay in a narrow flat of land between a stream to the southeast and a slope to the northwest. A clear-flowing stream, the Laubusbach, ambled past Weyer and the nearby village of Oberbrechen, eventually joining the Lahn River at the opposite boundary of the monks’ manorlands. The opposing slope rose rather steeply to form a long ridge, broken by a protruding knoll, atop of which stood the church.

The main road led into the village from the southwest and forked at the base of the church hill. One side bent to the right around the village and led eastward away from the monks’ lands into another lord’s manor and the village of Münster. The other bent left and headed northwest, over the ridge and through the heart of the abbey’s lands to a monastery alongside the village of Villmar.

Little more than an hour’s tramp from Weyer, Villmar was equally ancient and sat peacefully along the northern boundary of the abbey’s manorlands. A small cloister of Prüm’s monks settled there, but soon the see of Mainz took control. In 1165, with additional grants of land from Emperor Friederich Barbarossa, the Benedictine monastery became residence to an abbot, making it the Abbey of Villmar—a fledgling manor of some thirteen thousand hectares and eight villages, including Weyer, with approximately three thousand land-bound residents and a handful of free yeomen.

Wise to the ways of a dangerous world, the Archbishop of Mainz had insisted that his abbot in Villmar negotiate an alliance with the lord of the nearby castle of Runkel. For generations, Runkel’s lords ruled vast holdings of lands adjoining Villmar’s manor and maintained alliances with others. The decision to hire them as the abbey’s protectors had proven to be a shrewd choice.

Forested with beech and oak, pungent spruce and pine, sweet linden and ash, the soil of the abbey’s manor yielded generously, though stubbornly, to the plough, and its virile streams could turn the abbot’s new mills with ease. The region quickly became known as the “Golden Ground,” for it was rich and ripe and profitable. The simple villagers of these manorlands served dutifully, submitting to the seasons and the order of things as they supplied stores of wool, mutton, hides, timber, slate, fruits, grains, and pork to the abbot who ruled them for the good of all.

Perhaps this ground was golden for some, but it was not easy land for the folk born and bound to it. It seemed oft to yield as much stone as grain, and while stone might make a fitting church, it weighs heavily upon the faith of the ploughman. And such labors were not all that bore upon these simple folk. Beset by storm and famine, pestilence and plague, the quick-forgotten souls who filled the abbey’s villages had little choice but to yield themselves to their pitiful place and time. For them the world was but shadows and eventide. And they, like their sluggish oxen, dared not turn against the yoke. Most of these poor and weary wretches spent their days with faces bent toward the earth, ever pressing their aching legs against hard-won furrows. Fenced by fear of both life and death, they dared hope for little else than a secure soul and a few moments of joy before they were returned to darkness just beneath the very earth they sweated and bled upon.

The despair of winter had taken full hold of Weyer by late February of 1174. Baldric blustered about the forests as the woodward’s helper, seeing to the foresters’ harvest of winter timber, keeping a close watch on crews of charcoalers, and giving special heed to poachers culling deer and wolf and fox from his master’s lands.

In this frozen month Baldric was to be wed to a young woman named Hildrun whom his father Jost had chosen a year earlier in exchange for the forgiveness of a debt. Baldric reluctantly pledged her a fair dowry of two shillings, a small gold broach, two rams, and six ewes. Should Baldric die, it would secure her until another husband could be found.

Weyer’s priest had urged Jost to delay the wedding. After all, it was the Season of Lent and the carnal pleasures of marriage were thought unseemly for this time of denial. But Jost, conscious of his own mortality and not wanting to lose his bargain through delay, ignored the priest’s counsel. So, on a cold winter’s morning in late February, Baldric of Weyer and Hildrun of Villmar were wed within a circle of their kin in the snow by the village well. Given the priest’s objections, none dared stand in the doorway of the church according to the new custom. In fact, the priest was asked not to attend and he was happy to oblige. Instead, as in former times, Jost and Hildrun’s father heard the vows and pronounced the matrimony. Baldric then tread his foot upon his bride’s and the deed was done—for better or for worse.

Baldric spent little time with his new wife. She was hard-eyed and stiff. He complained her face was too bony, and he cared little for her black hair. She suffered skin-scales and sores, her hips were narrow, and he doubted her ease of birthing.

For Baldric and Hildrun and all the folk of the manor, the labors of winter dragged on through the tedious days of March. Time was spent spinning wool and repairing barns, carving spoons and plaiting baskets. Willow and ash were purchased from the village forester for shaping into harrow teeth, and the smith forged spades and ploughshares. Early lambs were tendered to the sheepfold where ewes suckled them with care. The stores of harvest-time were dwindling, and all eagerly awaited the mercy of spring.

The joys of Easter came early, on the twenty-fourth day of March, and the village was soon busy wedding more of its vital youth. Among the betrothed was Arnold, recently contracted by Jost to Gisela, the daughter of a servile merchant from the free-town of Limburg-by-the-Lahn. She was known for her beauty and high spirit. Although pleased by her appearance, Arnold was yet tremulous at heart.

Spring labors passed quickly—as did summer’s, and by mid-September Kurt had paid his penny for time on the thresher’s floor where he pounded his flail late into the darkness. The sanguine joys of long, warm days and the feasts of Lammas and the Assumption were soon but pleasant memories. Kurt worked long hours with the sickle as well as shouldering carpenters’ beams.

It was on a rainy evening in late September when Kurt’s door was thrown open by his brothers and a stranger. The trio stared mutely until Baldric crossed the common room and laid a heavy hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “Kurt, Leo’s come to take us to father. He … he was found in the millstream with his head split apart. Leo thinks a mason’s foot nudged loose a rock on the scaffold. Father was below.”

Berta lovingly wrapped hers arms about her husband’s shoulders and wept for him as tears rolled down his ruddy cheeks. Kurt said nothing but leaned into his wife’s embrace like a small boy.

Arnold stood in front of the floor hearth and stared into its small fire. He was weary from months of hauling harvest goods over rutted roads. His father had kept order to their crowded hut and he knew things would now be different. He’d have to face his nagging Gisela without help and deal with Baldric’s wife, Hildrun, as well. Hildrun was with child and growing more unbearable every day. He groaned and wished both mother and infant might soon join Jost.

Jost was buried in Weyer’s churchyard on a warm afternoon. His life had been better than that of other shepherds. He had lived to dream more than many and had achieved more than most. His shrewdness had shaped a legacy that would reach beyond his own time, and, after all, what is ever left behind other than one’s effect? Jost had often dreamt of his descendants toasting his good name, and he had spent his last days believing himself a good and worthy man.

The bereaved family huddled by the open grave. Their common sorrow found comfort in its sharing, and the grief of the circle was a healing balm. Kurt sighed and stroked Heinrich’s ginger-colored hair. The little one was plump and pink, oblivious to the cause of tears on his father’s face. Finally, Berta took her husband’s hand and the family slowly turned away, leaving Jost behind.

October brought both beauty and additional melancholy. Sieghild moved into Kurt’s hovel to escape the miseries of life with her other brothers. Then, as the oaks turned crimson and the beech released their golden leaves, part of Arnold’s cursed wish bore true, for poor Hildrun woke one night in terror to find her newborn gasping for air. Less than a fortnight old, little Ida had been early and jaundiced. It was a long night of suffering and no finger-tastes of thyme could spell her coughs, nor sage-balm ease her fever. On All Hallows’ morn Baldric watered the earth with a tear of his own. The tiny infant was washed and wrapped in a little shroud, then laid beside her grandfather in the shadow of the church.

On the morning after All Souls’ Day, just past the bells of terce, the monks in Villmar’s abbey set their tasks aside and were gathering to pray. A black-hooded stranger peered through the cloister’s jarred gate into the abbey grounds and waited impatiently for prayers to end. At his side stood a weary donkey laden with a humble assortment of baggage. Atop the haphazard collection of satchels and rolled blankets were tied a crude, three-legged stool, a well-wrapped table of some sort, and an iron candle stand.

The man was a wandering monk in desperate search of a community that might feed and house him, or even welcome him into their fellowship. Many such monks drifted the countryside and were usually viewed with suspicion if not contempt. These
gyrovoagi
were seen as an ever-increasing menace; gluttonous parasites consuming the good will and hospitality of their charitable brethren. In his day, St. Benedict viewed them with particular fury and prescribed a remedy in his Rule. This monk was not unaware of his likely predicament, but he hoped the parchment held tightly in his grip might open both gate and hearts.