Quest of Hope: A Novel (47 page)

Heinrich stared about in disbelief. He had been given little time to consider his predicament, and he gaped numbly at a group of men munching hastily on cheese and swigging beer. He thought his new fellows to be a handsome race. Almost to a man they were tall, ruddy and blond, blue-eyed and sharp featured—very much like the Northmen of Emma’s legends. They spoke a dialect that the baker struggled to understand—a form of German, though more guttural and harsh like the Dutch of their ancestors. Some Pomeranians from the east were mixed in, as well as a few converted Prussians and a handful of Thuringians from farther south.

A militia chieftain, a thick-chested, aging man named Lars, stroked his beard and tossed his long, grayed mane to one side. He gripped a fearsome battle-axe and used it as a pointer. “They’ll come in close along the road so their horses don’t bog in the marshes they suspect on either side,” he growled. “You, Devries, hide three companies in the ditches over there and there.” He pointed to the far edges of the field. “Well stand here, in front of the fort. If need be well fall back behind the walls, but I’d rather fight them in the open. After they hit our center, you flank them.” He turned to Heinrich. “We owe you much, friend. Stand with us and see how liberty is defended.”

The baker bowed. Being called a friend of men such as these felt good to him.

A priest scurried toward the commander and his resolute little army, and within moments Heinrich found himself suddenly kneeling shoulder to shoulder with free men as a priest prayed over him. He was bedevilled by his new dilemma. These strangers now expected him to fight the knights of his own world—the protectors of his life’s order. And he was receiving a blessing from a priest who served the same God as Father Pious and Archbishop Hartwig.
Or does he?
Heinrich had no time to reflect. It was as if his decision had been made for him, for he surely knew he could not simply walk away. Nor did he want to, for he was drawn to these astonishing people and felt strangely compelled to defend them.

A white-haired fellow smiled and handed Heinrich a weapon. It was a glaive, a long-handled lance of sorts, with a sharp blade-edge on one side and a hook on the other. He was told the hook could be used to unseat a rider and the blade could be wielded “like a sword tied on a pole.”

Heinrich grasped his glaive in both hands and stared at it for a moment. Suddenly, rough words directed him to his new company where his commander placed him in the center of a tight knot of militiamen.

A hard-faced youth instructed Heinrich how companies of tithings would stand in the open field in close formations, separated by large spaces. “Their cavalry either attacks one of our clusters with its whole, or it spreads to get us all. Either way, we get an advantage.” The lad had barely finished speaking when a rider came charging from the west. “They’re coming,” he roared.

The peasant militia numbered about seven score. The yeomen stood at the ready and Lars asked the priests to pray for howling winds that might blow aside the enemy’s arrows. “There!” he cried. A column of horsemen and infantry could be seen advancing rapidly. Even from a distance their arrogant posture could be spotted, and the simple freemen hated them for it. Emotions stirred. “Easy, men,” ordered the captains. A chant began to rise, louder and louder.
“Vrijheid altijd, Vrijheid altijd!”

The surprised knights from Oldenburg’s castle reined their mounts and stood in their stirrups to survey the motley lot grouped oddly before them. “Someone warned them!” groused one.

“Good, m’sword needs to be wet again!”

They studied the landscape and noticed a few waterbirds flying from the ditches to their right. The heavy drops dripping from their legs convinced the knights they would be clever to avoid the muck and mire of a likely swamp on that side. To their left the ground appeared firm, but the knights were unsure. “We needs keep tight to the roadway,” stated one.

“Aye. We’ve thirty-six mounted men. We ought drive nine wide and four rows deep … each row with two knights. We go straight down their center and scatter ‘em wide. We’ll seize the fort with our footmen and give chase on solid ground. Once they’ve dispersed, well loot the town and be back in Oldenburg by nones!”

Heinrich was set in the middle of a tithing in the center of the road. The position was one of honor, Lars had said. The poor baker wasn’t so sure. He stared breathlessly at the sight before him. Under colorful banners and atop impressive steeds, a steely line of mail-clad knights prepared to unleash their fury on an unkempt army of wool-clad yeomen. Their trumpeters sounded and cheers were lifted. Armored stallions snorted and tossed their heads as they pawed the earth. Heinrich closed his eyes. The order that was arrayed before him was
his
order. The pennants that rolled so easily in the morning’s air were the same that shadowed the world from which he came. He fixed his eyes on that which was about to strike, and he wondered.

The earth began to shake and the wind carried the sound of a thousand tumbling boulders as the cavalry charged. Closer and closer it roared, and behind it came a host of spinning legs bearing a forest of lances, axes, forks, and pikes. Heinrich’s heart pounded, his body chilled.

Slowly, ever so slowly, yet with earnest confidence and unyielding resolution, a defiant cry rose up from the Stedingers. It grew louder and louder until it roared like a great and wondrous bellow from the Lion of Judah Himself. It was hosanna; it was liberty’s reply. These free men would not run!

Heinrich clenched his jaw and gripped his glaive, and when the first wave crashed atop him he did not yield. He leapt into the battle like a man gone mad. He thrust and jabbed, swiped and yanked his glaive in, at, from, and through knights’ flesh and horse with no more thought to reason or to cause. He lunged about the tempest as time fell still, and as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.

The gasping baker stared at the heaps of groaning men strewn across the once green grass. He could hardly hear his commander put his ranks into a new formation, and he took his position while gazing numbly at his blood-smeared glaive. In the pause his mind suddenly flew to Weyer and his boys. He could see their faces in the shine of the steel and the memory jolted him. He bade them farewell.

The astonished knights retreated in humiliation. They had not expected either courage or skill-at-arms and were dismayed at the ardor of their foe. They suffered damaging losses to both mount and rider, and their footmen had received enormous casualties from a surprise flank attack. The furious lords hastened to salvage both their pride and their army’s resolve as they regrouped to lead with cavalry once more. The knights hunched forward in their saddles enraged and determined. They would form a column and drive forward like an iron lance.

Brave Heinrich stood in the first line, nervous and unsure. He breathed quickly and gripped his weapon with fists squeezed white with fear. Behind him and to each side crowded the woollen horde of angry peasants. They chanted and cursed and raised their spears and axes in defiance of the ordered ranks of knights preparing to charge them once again. A long trumpet blasted and the earth began to shake.

Heinrich licked his dry lips and closed his eyes. A warm wind blew through his curly hair, and it felt good as it brushed across his stubbled face. Yearning only for peace, the simple man seemed always beset by strife and disharmony. He had spent his life offered to the bondage of things familiar, yet he was ever pursued by the disrupting purposes of something greater than himself. Persistent, patient, and persevering, truth had labored to stir and prod, to urge and teach until, at last, the poor wretch might be freed to lift his eyes toward the light beyond his own dark world. Now he had been placed in the center of the greatest paradox of all his troubled years.

The mighty warhorses raged closer and closer like a furious tempest bearing down upon a helpless village. The thundering hooves filled Heinrich’s ears with dread, but the man held shoulder to shoulder with his stouthearted comrades. Steely-eyed and bearing all the confidence of their station, the knights crashed into the stubborn line of these lesser men.

With a shout and a lunge, Heinrich entered the whirlwind. All around him swirled the blurred images of horse and knight, the flash of swords and the splatters of blood. The stench of butchered men and slaughtered beasts filled his nose and choked his lungs; his ears were crowded with the thuds and clangs of hammers and steel, the cries of men and the whinnies of stallions lurching about the mêlée. Heinrich jabbed his glaive this way and that, impaling whom he could and dodging others. The man fought well.

But somewhere in the fury Heinrich’s world fell silent. He dropped to the ground gently and closed his eyes as if to sleep. It was then, it seemed, his spirit was lifted like a hawk on the wind far above the bloody plain. Higher and higher he climbed until he felt he was soaring and drifting in the sun’s kind currents. There he sailed and fluttered free, like a butterfly on a summer’s day. His weary heart was glad and he sang with joy as the warmth of the merciful sun bathed his wounded soul. Calmed and steadied, he was touched by hope and returned to his struggle in the world of time.

Chapter 20

A NEW JOURNEY BEGINS

M
ein Herr? Mein Herr?
Can you hear me?” A gentle, middle-aged woman bent anxiously over the stranger. The fevered man stirred ever so slightly, then returned to a deep, dreamless sleep.

Anna sat back and sighed, then whispered to her daughter-in-law, “He has come and gone from us for a fortnight or more.” She ran her hands through her gray hair and smoothed her apron. “God’s will be done.”

Anna’s young daughter-in-law stood at her side. She was blue-eyed but dark-haired, unlike most of the Stedinger women. Her ancestors were settlers from somewhere near Bruges, a crowded Flemish city in the Low Country north of Normandy. She was willowy and intelligent, strong featured and compassionate. “Mother, he is bound by fits all the night, he calls names and cries aloud. I fear the spirits haunt him.”

“Ja,
Edda, I fear the same. Day by day he suffers so, yet methinks his body agonizes less than his soul. He seems to be in the grip of devils. But, devils or not, he only swallows a bit of broth. He must eat more else he shall surely die.” The older woman sighed. She was plump and weathered by the wind. Blue-eyed and ruddy, she had spent her life struggling against the land she dearly loved.

Edda nodded and wiped the stranger’s clammy brow. She pushed damp curls off his forehead. “Husband is glad to bind us to this stranger.”

“Indeed I am!” bellowed Cornelis as he strode to the table. The dark-eyed farmer sat down and wiped the summer sweat off his broad, bearded face. He lifted his young son and daughter to his lap and poured a tankard of beer. He cut a thick slice of cheese and said, “He’s yet to waken, Edda?”

“Aye, husband,” answered his wife. “He seems fevered again. His wraps are clean and tight… the infection is clear and your mother seared the stump in places again this morning.”

Cornelis grimaced. He gestured toward the unconscious man. “That, m
’kinder,
is who saved your
vader.”
The young man tilted his head to pour a long, welcome draught of beer down his parched throat. He set his tankard down hard, then sat silently in thought. A hot June breeze rustled the thatch atop the brick-and-peat farmhouse.

Anna waited patiently and smiled lovingly at her grown son. A few years prior her husband had been killed overthrowing Lineburg Castle, but before that he had fought with the militia in several skirmishes. She was no stranger to the way men faced the haunting recollections of bloody combat.

Cornelis dragged his sleeve across his lips and stared blankly. “None knew his name—from the first he seemed confused and uncertain. Yet when the horses were upon us he fought like one of us … all say so. When the bishop’s footmen waded in at the second charge, I was behind him when he was struck hard by a mace. I can still see the way his head bounced sideways … like a bladder ball with a good kick … and as his face spun toward me I saw his eye was gone. Yet he turned back and jabbed his glaive hard into the man! Next I knew, I was on the ground. … All I remember is looking up at a huge knight with an axe. He was swinging at m’fellows—this way an’ that, like a harvester cutting tall grass! Then he saw me at his feet and smiled…. Ach, dear God in heaven, I can still see that smile!”

Cornelis reached for his beer and turned his eyes toward the suffering stranger lying quietly on the nearby bed. Edda and Anna looked patiently at one another. They had heard the story countless times.

“But then he came—this stranger. He sees me down … I know this because his good eye locked on mine. I struggled to m’feet as he swiped his glaive at the knight. I tried to help but it all happened too quick. …” He closed his eyes and nodded. “Aye … aye. The axe came down hard and chopped into the poor wretch’s arm like a cleaver into ox-flesh. The good fellow fell to one side and collapsed into m’own arms. I remember the peaceful look on his face as I laid him down—I shan’t e’er forget it.”

Cornelis sighed and cut another slice of cheese before adding, “I must confess it was sweet to see that cursed knight dead on the field at day’s end. Devils! I swear, someday we shall throw them off us for good.” Angry, unshed tears welled up in the man’s eyes.

Edda stroked her husband’s hair and filled his tankard. She sent her children to their garden chores while Anna tended Heinrich.

It was Wednesday, the thirteenth day of June in the Year of Grace 1207 when Heinrich’s fever finally broke and he opened his left eye wide. He stared about the tidy farmhouse, disoriented and anxious. He was weak and trembling as he raised his right hand to his face. He gingerly pressed his forefinger into the socket where his right eye once sat and groaned as he gently probed the empty hole. He suddenly felt sick and tried to lift himself by his elbows. A terrible pain shot through his left arm and he reached his right hand over to grasp it. But, to Heinrich’s dismay, his hand found nothing but air. He looked to see and released a low groan when he found no arm at all.

Edda heard the wounded man stirring and hurried to his side. She held his head softly and soothed him with calm reassurances. She wiped his brow with the fever-rag and settled the poor man back against his pillow. “Anki, run for Papa.” Her daughter scrambled to the field.

Cornelis came running from a distant pasture and burst through the doorway panting and perspired. He ran to Heinrich’s bed and fell to his knees.
“Prijzen God! Hoe maakt tu het?”

Heinrich stared blankly, then mumbled,
“Wo bin ich?”

At a neighbor’s home, Anna had heard the commotion and returned quickly. She entered the room with a smile as big as the Stedinger sky. “He is German! We must speak in his tongue.” She turned to the bewildered man.
“Wilkommen,
we will help you.”

The man was suddenly relieved, but still confused. He offered a timid smile. “Many thanks.” Heinrich’s voice was rusty from lack of use. “It seems you have helped me already.” He looked uncomfortably at his stump.

Anna motioned for Cornelis and directed her daughter-in-law toward a kettle of early peas and fish. Like most of the Stedingers, Cornelis and his wife spoke a dialect that was a mixture of Frisian and German. Furthermore, since life near the sea made contact with people of other lands inevitable, many could speak a little Norse, some Danish, even French and English. Cornelis was primarily a farmer but had launched a prosperous trading business in nearby Elsfleth that had required he learn other tongues. He laid a strong hand on Heinrich’s shoulder and spoke this time in German. “You are in the village we call Weserfeld, not far from Berne. You were injured in the battle and we brought you here.” He then introduced himself and his family. “This is my
Frau,
Edda; my mother, Anna; and my children, Anki and Bolko.” He asked a few questions of Heinrich, then turned to his family. “Our friend is named ‘Heinrich,’ and he is a servile baker from the village of Weyer in the center of the empire. He is a landowner, but bound to a monastery in a place called Villmar. He has two living lads, Wilhelm and Karl, and a wife.”

Anna beamed. “A baker! So, you must tell us how one might prepare—”

“Leave him be,” laughed Cornelis. “By heaven, Mother, let the man recover first.” He turned to Heinrich and slowly repeated the story of the battle and how it was that the baker had come to his home. Heinrich’s memory began to return, though he had few recollections of the battle itself.

“The last I remember is pushing m’glaive under a footman’s jerkin. I remember because I think I knew him … I fed him bread the day before.” His voice trailed away and he sighed. “As for the rest… it is nothing but a vague dream.”

“Just as well. Now, friend, eat.”

Heinrich had lost a great deal of weight. His face was drawn and his legs were spindly. He was helped to the table, one not unlike his own, and he slumped into a simple wooden chair. He glanced about the farmhouse and felt good. The house was tidy and bright, clean and airy. It was part of a small village placed at the juncture of the Weser and the Hunte at the northern border of Stedingerland.

A northerly breeze brought fresh, sea air through the open door and Heinrich breathed deeply. Despite the heat of the summer day he felt chilled and Edda wrapped him in a warm cloak. He patted little Anki atop the pale braids piled on her head and he smiled kindly at shy, little Bolko, the farmer’s son. That day friendship sprouted in a seedbed of gratitude—a place where trust and devotion send the deepest and most lasting roots.

By mid-August Heinrich had regained much of his strength. At thirty-three years of age he did not heal as quickly as a younger man might, and he found the long recovery to be frustrating. His patient caregivers were unrestrained in their generosity, but few things troubled the man more than receiving without giving in kind—it was a veiled vice rooted in the subtleties of pride. He did what he could to serve Cornelis’s household, but with one arm and one eye his opportunities were severely limited. He pulled weeds from the kitchen garden with the children, helped Edda herd the cattle from field to field, and did what he could to bake bread for the family and their friends.

By the Feast of the Assumption Heinrich’s face had healed completely, and on the morning of the feast day Edda presented him with a leather patch she had fashioned from a well-tanned cowhide. She tied it neatly around his head with a cord of hemp her daughter had braided as a gift. Heinrich thanked the six-year-old with a gentle kiss on her cheek and squeezed Edda’s hand with heartfelt appreciation.

Anna then stepped forward with a smile and presented their patient with more gifts. She and her daughter-in-law had sewn the man new leather leggings, a wool tunic, a leather vest, and a winter cloak of sealskin. “This is no empire wool!” boasted Anna. “This is Danish wool. It looks rough but wears smooth. And the cloak comes from Norway. The breeches are of mallet-softened sheepskin! They ought last to the end of your days. Ah, and here, we’ve made you good linen under-breeches as well!”

Heinrich received the gifts with a trembling hand. He felt the fabrics and knew they’d last him many, many years. “I … I—”

“Ah, you’ve no need to speak, good sir!” interrupted Anna.

Heinrich sat speechlessly and stared at his hosts with wonder.

“We didn’t want you to be worried about the winter to come.”

The man embraced each woman as best he could with one arm. “I’ve no right words to thank you. I shall gratefully wear them on m’journey home.”

Cornelis had been watching quietly from a corner chair. “You need another month, maybe more, to get your strength.”

“Nay, sir.” Heinrich shook his head. He yearned to return to Weyer. “I must leave soon, else I risk an early winter.”

Cornelis beckoned all to gather round him. He looked at Heinrich with compassion but with a firm expression. For a young man of twenty-two years he was strong and wise, brave enough, but prudent. “First, I’ve news … Duke Philip has been assassinated and that means the empire’s in greater confusion than ever. Alliances are shifting and the lords are in chaos. I must confess it makes me smile some!

“But, I’ve other news that makes a problem for us. Seems common talk has put us all at risk. Word of a runaway servant has found its way to Oldenburg—a runaway that helped us set a trap for the soldiers.” Cornelis shook his head. “Our neighbors know of you. They love you for what you did and always shall. But this village is filled with idle tongues and men who ought know better! Word of a stranger always moves quick, especially one with a story. Methinks they’ve talked of you from place to place over the summer, and the words have even found their way to Bremen. From there … news travels the world.