Quest of Hope: A Novel (56 page)

“Hmm,” mused the tinker. She closed her eyes and sat quietly for a few moments. At last she moved. She lit a candle by a coal and turned a tender eye toward the curious baker. “I spend my days with broken things.” She took Heinrich’s hand and held her candle by his eye. “You are a vessel within a vessel. Each is cracked, but each is yet filled with darkness. Both must be broken to let the light in.” She paused and squeezed Heinrich’s hand hard. “If you must go to Rome, expect that which you do not.”

She released her grip and leaned forward. Her tone was firm but kind. “Now hear me. For each of the Commandments do penance for one month; for each of the seven deadly sins, one month; for the Golden Rule, one month. Serve in Rome for eighteen months. Suffer the bells, suffer the smoke, suffer the suffering… it is the only way.”

Chapter 23

PENANCE

H
einrich hurried from the tinker’s shop somewhat confused by the proprietor’s riddle but decidedly purposed and his mind fixed on the plan. He strode the roadway with a chin set hard in defiance to both the archbishop and his miserable steward, and as he climbed the rising slopes he felt all the more relieved to be leaving the waste of that foolish year behind.

He was determined, yet troubled. Though he had been lied to, Heinrich was well aware that he had been blessed beyond measure. Over his shoulder was slung a satchel stuffed with provisions and coins, and on his back hung a well-waxed rucksack filled with precious salt. He had left home to suffer, yet it seemed he could not escape mercy.
Even m’boots don’t fail me!
he thought. Indeed, the boots Lord Niklas had given him years before were worn, but neither torn nor leaking. They had become comfortable like two old friends sitting close by a warm hearth.

Heinrich filled his thick chest with clean mountain air as he followed the sparkling Salzach southward. His thick legs stepped lightly along the dirt road and his broad face beamed under the cloudless sky. The man was not ignorant of the risks involved in daring the Alps in November. It was already the third week of the gray month, yet fortunately, the southerly wind continued to rule the air. With continued good fortune he thought he might enter Rome by Christmas Day!

The pilgrim traveled alone through a landscape that filled him with wonder. He dared lift his eye from time to time to marvel at the towering mountains rising to touch the floor of heaven itself. Grand valleys of mist curled and lapped along these giants’ feet and disappeared midst the mixed-hued greens of ancient forests. Heinrich’s nostrils were filled with the intoxicating scent of pine and spruce, and he rejoiced to hear the screech of eagles and hawks soaring bold and free above.

He reached Bischoffen in good time. There, where the river bent westward and narrowed, he joined a small caravan of Syrian merchants hurrying home with a summer’s bounty earned at the fairs in faraway Cologne, Champagne, and Frankfurt. They spoke enough German to barter food for Heinrich’s services as a cart-driver. It seemed they had lost a young Bavarian carter who thought their late rush through the passes unwise. In any event, Heinrich was glad to rest his feet and grip the reins of a two-horse team.

The caravan consisted of two score of men; most were pagan followers of Mohammed. Heinrich found the company of these dark-skinned men to be somewhat uncomfortable, but not totally disagreeable. He had spent his life, as had his forebears, instructed in the evil ways of these infidels. They seemed ever poised to seize upon the lands of Christendom and had ruled Spain and half of France. They were a constant menace in the Christian east and for centuries had persecuted the Christian faithful in Palestine. In Jerusalem they now required Christians to wear leather girdles as a symbol of their servitude and forbade them to learn the Arab tongue, for to do so would be to defile Allah’s people.

For generations Christ’s faithful had endured alternating seasons of harshness and tolerance while they quietly suffered the added offense of watching their most holy places fall one by one into heathen hands. A small corner of the Holy Land still remained under Christian rule, and pilgrims continued to go in an unrelenting stream; they saw their lot as that of Christ’s and suffered in hopes of a final deliverance. Deliverance had surely been delayed, however. The black-and-white tents of the terrible Turks under Suleiman now dotted the plains and mountains of that land, and Christian pilgrims had become the targets of cruel torture and death. To these challenges the knights of Europe were still hoping to rise again in Holy Crusade.

As he bounced through the valleys tightening around him, Heinrich began to wonder why these Syrians could peddle their spices and their silks unharmed, while Christian knights were dying on the bloody sands of Palestine. He stared at them as they knelt to pray and wondered if they were asking Allah to strike down the Christ. He knew Jerusalem had fallen to their kind less than twenty years before. He also knew that a remnant of Christian Palestine was hard-pressed on every side by a rising storm of infidels, perhaps kin to the ones he now served. Heinrich slowly became incensed.
Look at ‘em! They strut about like clever peacocks in their foolish turbans and silk. They think our lands are theirs for the taking!
The man began to bristle.

Finally, in the early twilight of that same day Heinrich reined in his horses and dismounted the wagon. He snatched a loaf of stale bread and a flagon of ale from the caravan’s provisioner and walked away. He’d not serve them another step. Midst a volley of blasphemies and curses, the man spat and marched north toward a village he had seen from higher ground. He could hear a distant bell ringing compline and he quickened his step to find shelter before nightfall.

Heinrich arrived in a small village set neatly against a starlit lake. In the silver moonlight he could see the silhouetted ring of mountains securing the modest hamlet at its center, cupping the village as if to shelter it from the evil world beyond. A stout, stone church squatted near the lake’s edge and he knocked on its heavy wooden door. A kindly priest named Father Wilfrid answered and welcomed the pilgrim inside to spend the night by a pleasant fire.

It was a good night for Heinrich. The priest was cheerful and earnest, his bread soft and sweetened, and the fire bright and warm. Heinrich slept like a happy child and awakened to a charitable first-meal of porridge and cider. Father Wilfrid blessed him with a traveler’s prayer and an embrace. Heinrich looked about the warm surroundings and smiled.
This one feels true,
he thought. The priest begged him to delay his leaving for a few moments so that he might show him something in his workshop by the lake.

Heinrich followed the eager man into a shed containing slabs of marble. “I collect these, my son. A man can only do so many baptisms, so many Holy Masses, so many burials before …”—he glanced about to be sure no other was listening—“before it gets a bit tiresome!”

Heinrich chuckled.

“So I carve the wisdom of others into rock for the ages to come. See, here.” Wilfrid pointed to several finished pieces. Most were inscribed in Latin but a few were in German. He translated them. “‘Open me this beautiful day and lead me into the house of God. Here at this place my soul shall be happy.’ This goes over a church door.”

Heinrich liked it. “Where is such a church?”

The priest shrugged. “I pray to find one!”

Heinrich laughed again. He liked this fellow.

“And here.
‘Starke und Hilfe in alle Not’”

“Ah.” Heinrich nodded. “‘Strength and Help in all Need.’ Would that it be so.”

The comment did not escape the priest’s notice. He paused, then showed Heinrich another. “‘Sei
getran bis an den Tod,’
‘Be true until you Die.’”

Heinrich was silent. He looked about the shop and admired the priest’s eye for wisdom and for beauty. He nodded, then ducked through the doorway and stood by the lake’s crystal waters. “This village has a name, father?”

“Ja,
‘tis called Zeil. Zell by the Lake.”

Heinrich stared at the shimmering water and the snow-laced mountains that rose around it. His glance lightly followed the shoreline and over the knotty boughs of oak and maple, the delicate bared branches of white-trunked birch, and the yellowed wands of bending willow. He turned to the father. “How does one know what is true?”

Father Wilfrid was not accustomed to such questions—his flock was more apt to ask how best to boil swan! But the young priest had a mind that was deep like the lake he loved, and clear like its waters. It was a matter he, too, had struggled with often. He answered slowly, but with conviction. “It is wise to know what it is, for it is the only thing worthy to serve.” He paused and tossed a few pebbles into his lake. “I believe, dear stranger, that truth is what remains when all else fails.”

The priest of Zell gave Heinrich good directions to the Brenner Pass, and soon the pilgrim was hurrying through tight, twisting valleys squeezed between the steep-sloped mountains. Amazed, humbled, awestruck, and overwhelmed at every turn, the simple peasant of distant Weyer pressed on. He was pleased his journey took him through some simple hamlets where he could buy bread and cheese from cheerful, pink-faced villagers.

Heinrich finally found his way through Innsbruck and followed the rising Sill valley until he arrived at the white cliffs of the Brenner Pass. Here he found himself suddenly crowded by many others urgently pressing toward their destinations. Merchantmen, legates, men-at-arms, and pilgrims from all parts of the Holy Empire met to face the toll keepers.

Heinrich thought the toll a bit pricey for one man with only a rucksack and a satchel. But standing in the queue he heard something that was worth the half-shilling toll—he learned that a caravan of Syrians had just been slaughtered by a band of rogue knights returning from Palestine. Their bodies were found stripped and their wagons burned. The only evidence of the “crime” was a torn sash bearing the crest of a Norman lord.

From Brenner, Heinrich hiked with a company of legates and couriers in a rapid descent into warmer environs. One fellow traveler was a longwinded messenger from Rome who was able to give the man some idea of where he might locate the church he was seeking. “Ah,
si. Santa Maria in Domnica. Si,
it is on the Caelian Hill. I know it well. It is a bit south of the Coliseum and not so very far to its west is the basilica of
St. Giovanni
and the pope’s palace in the Lateran.
Si,
my friend, I know it well. But how do you?”

Heinrich grew more excited. His cheeks felt warm and his veins pumped. A miner in Hallein had told him many things of the ancient Romans. He knew something about the Coliseum and its horrors. Heinrich explained his need to present a letter to the superior of that particular church.

The man loosened the fur collar of his shin-length tunic and laid his cloak over his arm. He removed a silk cap from his head and tossed a head full of long hair in the warm sun. “My
matrona
left me at the door of Santa Maria’s while I was yet a babe. This church … it serves the poor well. It stands where St. Lawrence once gave alms to the needy. Ah, good stranger. Wait until you see the mosaic! ‘Tis, ‘tis beyond words.” You see, the church’s art is Greek. It is a church made beautiful by rebels!” He swallowed a draught of red wine from a flagon slung from his shoulder. “Have you any interest in these things?”

“Aye! Indeed I do. I’m rather fond of the work of rebels!” Heinrich’s eye beamed. “Please, we’ve days ahead; go on!”

The traveler nodded. He was cheerful and had been well-schooled by a wealthy Lombardian family who had adopted him from the church when he was six. Now a man of middle age, he was fluent in Italian, Latin, German, English, and French. In the following days, he taught Heinrich much of the history of Rome and its influence on all of Christendom.

Heinrich was intrigued. He had known no more than what legends were passed from the elders in Weyer, or what little news had come from passersby. Suddenly, he was beginning to realize that his life was but one story told in a moment, yet an integral part of others gone before and more yet to come.

The travelers descended quickly through the hardwoods of the Tyrol, past Balzano, Trento, and Verona. By mid-December Heinrich was striding through the warm, flat plain of the Po Valley. Here he marched past fallowed fields of rich soil made fertile by centuries of erosion from the Apennines and the Alps.