Quest of Hope: A Novel (52 page)

“In these difficult months past we have lost six of our score of brethren to disease or injury, Brother Radoslaw being one of them. A novice was sent away for his rebellious spirit and another has taken flight. Our fields are in desperate want and we, now, are in need. Would you serve us as our baker until another is sent?”

It was as if a hand seized Heinrich’s heart. He knew he had little choice. He dreaded another delay but considered the immensity of his soul’s present debt and quickly calculated what credits the agonizing service might yield. “How long do you think it shall take for another to come?”

The prior darkened. “How long?” his voice was sharp and cutting. “How long? I answer you thus: as long as God’s pleasure requires.”

How might any man challenge such an answer? “Ah, indeed,” mumbled Heinrich.

It was a dull day between the Feast of the Assumption and St. Michael’s in the year of Grace 1209 when a timid monk in a well-pressed scapular appeared at Heinrich’s bakery door. The prior introduced the new member of the cloister as Brother Wienczyslaw. Heinrich dusted his leather apron with a huff and repeated the bowing monk’s words. “Aye, ‘peace be to you’ too. ‘Ave y’any knowledge of baking?” he asked curtly.

The prior smiled and ducked quickly out the door.

“Nay, good baker.”

“Nay?
Ach, mein Gott in Himmel!”
Heinrich was exasperated. He walked to the door and felt the cool air of late September. “If I don’t leave this place I shall go mad!” He turned about and scowled. “Well, you’ll be getting some now!”

For weeks the baker furiously pushed his exhausted apprentice through every stage of baking. The poor monk did his best to learn quickly, and by early October Heinrich hastily declared to the prior that the Pole was fit. “I find him to be a bit slow, but willing. And I needs begin my journey. I made a vow to the ship’s captain that I’d deliver his token directly! That was nearly two years ago!”

The prior nodded. “I do have one question, good Heinrich.”

The baker set his jaw. There would be nothing the shaveling might ask that would obligate him to a single added duty. “
Ja?”

“Would you be sure to receive our song of blessing before you leave on the morrow?” He smiled.

Heinrich nearly laughed out loud.
Free to go!
his heart cried.
Can it be so?

The sun had barely broken over a new day when Heinrich received the prayers and blessings of the brethren at Posen. The white-robed men waved kindly and sang a final psalm as he passed by them. A few secretly worried that the man may have gone mad in the dreadful winter past and, judging the way he then turned and raced from sight, others thought he surely had.

“At last!” cried Heinrich aloud as the smoky columns of the horrid cloister faded behind him. The man was quite convinced that no misery he might ever face again could equal the damp grayness and unrelenting monotony of that place. He looked ahead to the flat road that lay in wait and he smiled. He felt suddenly strong and vigorous. His clothing was clean and mended. His dagger was sharp and his eye-patch, like his leather boots, soft and well oiled. He had secured both necklaces at the bottom of his satchel along with the Laubusbach stone. The rest of his bag was stuffed with an assortment of foods and a generous pouch of silver pennies given to him by the monks.

October’s crisp air was bracing and enlivened the man’s stride. Upright and resolute, the one-armed man with a swirling beard and graying tangle of auburn curls marched against a warm southern breeze, grinning and greatly relieved. By day he walked southward through the wide, green, Oder River valley past villages of German or Slavic inhabitants. At night he wrapped himself with his cloak and lay upon the cooling earth on pine boughs or wilting weeds. The Oder River gave him water, a few passers by bits of bread or cheese. From time to time he would stop to kneel with a pilgrim priest at one of the many, simple prayer
Kapelles
and from them he learned much about the larger world they traveled.

He was not certain where he would spend the winter. He was told the signs were warning of early snows, particularly in the great mountains of the south. “You should not dare the passes this autumn, my son,” counseled one journeying priest. “However, you might have time yet to press on to Vienna or Salzburg.”

Heinrich shrugged. He had no idea which city to choose and gazed at the priest helplessly. “Hmm, it seems you have little knowledge of either?”

“Nay, father.”

“You have stated you are on pilgrimage to Rome?”

“Aye.”

The priest scratched his head and thought for a moment. “From here either path could lead you to Rome. Hmm. Vienna is a most lovely city and I believe ‘tis a free one now, though I am not certain of it. But, Salzburg may be free as well… I know not. No matter. The Kingdom of the Huns borders Vienna and I do avoid every sort of border that I can. I’ve learned over my life that all boundaries, whether those of kingdoms or of persons, are places where troubles collide, places of sure conflict, risk, and peril.

“If I were you, I would press south and westward to Salzburg. It is deep in the Duchy of Bavaria and places you along a good, direct line to Rome for your springtime journey.”

Heinrich nodded. He was at the man’s mercy but his words seemed reasonable. The priest bent over and drew a map with a stick in the roadway. “Here … here is where we are. You must leave Poland behind you, travel due west through Silesia, and find the Elbe River in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Follow the Elbe Valley west to Prague.” He lifted his head. “Take care in Prague. ‘Tis another place of borders. You needs skirt the city, else your winter may be there and I doubt that would be a good thing.

“Now, after Prague follow the Moldau River south. Be warned of the Bohemian forest. ‘Tis a fearful place, filled with bogs and horrid marshes called the
Sumava.”
The priest crossed his chest and prayed before continuing.

“The Moldau turns hard to the west. There you must find a small roadway that travels to the wondrous Danube River. ‘Tis a glorious blue … like sapphire! Follow it west to the confluence of the Inns River at the town of Passau. Follow the Inns south to its split, then travel along the narrow Salzach River upstream into Salzburg … you shall see a mighty fortress on a hill just outside the city.”

Heinrich drew a deep breath and nodded. The priest made him recite the directions six times. Then he let the troubled baker rest. With a friendly embrace the priest offered one more word of advice: “Be on the watch for rogue knights and men-at-arms whether German or Slav … and highwaymen as well. It would be better for you to find the company of a caravan … but we must leave that to God’s wisdom.” With a final hug and word of blessing, the kindly priest disappeared along the lonely road leaving Heinrich to his own devices.

The peasant reordered his leggings and his cloak, counted his foodstuffs and coins, then pressed on, relieved to have a plan but feeling a bit anxious for the perils ahead. Ignorance had been a more favored companion.

The days passed without rain, but the wind now blew from the east and delivered a damp coldness that chilled Heinrich to the bone. Despite his growing discomfort, the man set a spirited pace. Then the heavy rains came just as Heinrich entered Passau. He quickly negotiated shelter in a grain shed and earned a silver penny and two meals for one-handing the latrine’s shovel for a full day. On the following day, Heinrich watched a wagon of Slavic slaves roll through the town’s muddy streets. He stared at the wretches from his latrine as they passed him by and his heart broke. He was particularly troubled by the face of an attractive young woman that he thought he remembered from his passage on the ship so long ago. She was packed into the jostling wagon with a dozen or so men, two children, and a few other women. Each was scantily clad in threadbare homespuns and shivering in the cold rain. They were filthy and unkempt, and all but she sat slumped in their places. It was her erect posture and the fire in her eyes that had caught Heinrich’s attention on the ship and he swore he recognized it again. Perhaps it was that she looked so much like Varina.

The man found sleep to be elusive that night and it was with a mysterious compulsion that he arose before dawn’s first light. He pulled on his boots quickly and followed his instincts through the sleepy footpaths and alleys of the smoke-heavy town. It was along such an unnamed alleyway where he stopped and listened carefully.
There!
he thought.
Over there.
Heinrich walked silently toward the shadow of a building. He heard a slap and a groan, a bit of laughter and a shout. Heinrich followed the sounds closer to the thatch-roofed smith-shed where he placed his eye against a small chink in the wattle walls. In the yellow light of several thick-handled torches he saw a group of prisoners bound with ropes. They were the same Slavs he had seen enter the town the day before. The slaves sat helpless, though defiant, and they could do little but stifle the outrage that rose within them as two of their captors made sport with one of the women.

“Soldiers,” muttered Heinrich. He studied the slaves carefully and found the woman who had reminded him of Varina standing defiant and hard-faced as she awaited her inevitable turn. The baker thought quickly. He looked about and grunted. The rainy dawn was gray and dark. A thick smoke from sagging hearth-fires filled the streets with a heavy smog; it was a fortuitous blanket of cover.

Heinrich slipped quietly to the far side of the smith-shed and opened a small door that was set deep within the building’s shadows. From there he crept inside the shed slowly and eased his way along a dark wall where he paused. No one had seen him. He looked about and noticed a loft of hay mounded high with dry fodder. The soldiers were busy grunting and belching and trifling with their prey. With their backs to him, Heinrich saw his opportunity. He took three long strides toward a torch, then jerked it from its holder, and tossed it into the hay. As the dry tinder began to snap, he crouched into a dark corner and drew his dagger.

The slaves cried out. They were bound by ropes to the shed’s posts and their eyes bulged wide in sudden terror. The soldiers turned in astonishment and raced toward the rising fire to beat it with their capes. They coughed and gasped for air as flames licked the underbelly of the thatch roof. Realizing the cause was hopeless, the rogues abandoned both the building and the slaves, cursing as they fled.

Heinrich lunged from his cover and dashed toward the panicked prisoners. His dagger cut through their ropes like it was passing through soft fruit, and he quickly released them into the smoke-choked streets. From there they stormed through the chaos of the rousing town and into the forest standing just beyond the timber walls.

Heinrich ran with them deep into the Bohemian woodland. He followed them to a clearing where a large male took charge of his kind and gathered a circle of panting faces. Heinrich’s eye swept the dim glade until it fell upon the woman he remembered. He stared at her for a moment until a voice turned his head.

“Dekuji, dekuji,”
repeated the leader. Heinrich bowed. He received the man’s thanks graciously and smiled at each of the dirty faces inclined respectfully toward his own. The German bade farewell and watched the band of pagans disappear into the forest. They would need to travel a great distance to reach whatever villages they had been taken from. Heinrich hoped God would watch over them, yet he wondered if such a thing were possible.

Heinrich wisely slipped back into the village. He was sure he had not been seen by anyone, and if he had gone missing the angry magistrate might hunt him all the way to Salzburg. He quietly returned to the latrine where he watched the townsmen scrambling to douse the fire. Despite the rain and cold, the man was glad-hearted and joyful. He pictured the band of Slavs vanishing into the wood and he grinned.

The pleasure of his secret kindness was short-lived however, for Heinrich had no sooner finished his inglorious labors when a furious magistrate turned a penetrating eye on him. Heinrich paled and bowed to the officer and the priest at his side. “You there!” growled the officer. “What do you know of this morning’s bad business?”

“I’ve seen the smoke, sire, and heard ‘bout the fire and some words of escaped slaves.”

“Aye? You’ve heard things already?”

Heinrich gulped. “Aye, sire. I’ve spent the morning at the latrine … lots of noise there, sire.”

Some soldiers laughed.

“Silence!” barked the officer. “Where are the slaves? Has anyone spoke of them?”