Sylvia (48 page)

In fact we had not thought of very much. Nicholas had insisted that on his latest visitation the voice of Jesus had instructed him that he must leave on the day of Pentecost, just sixteen days after I'd returned from the visit to Brother Dominic's grave. When I pointed out that we couldn't possibly be ready he shrugged. ‘I cannot disobey my Saviour!' And that was the end of it. Which was all very well, but it left Father Hermann and myself shaking our heads in dismay.

Father Hermann had set up an alms box near the sacristy of St Mary's on the Kapitol and the people of Cologne gave generously at first. While they had given the Children's Crusade a nod, thinking it the natural outcome of the Miracle of St Martin's, they were being called upon to feed several thousand children each day and things were slowly turning sour. Some grumbling in the markets could be heard when our collection carts went round. Peasants are steady grumblers and not a naturally generous lot, but it must be said in fairness that with so many hungry mouths to feed and with very few children possessing any means of their own, they were beginning to have good reasons to complain. Moreover, the country folk coming into Cologne with produce, who camped outside the city gates waiting for them to open when the Angelus rang, now found their passage hindered by the hundreds of children arriving overnight.

The churches of St Martin's and St Mary's on the Kapitol possessed four horsedrawn carts that the bishop, thinking to regain the people's confidence by supporting the Children's Crusade, had allowed us to use. We would visit the markets daily with them, two of the carts to the produce market, one each to the fish and butchers' markets. Every day the carts, fitted with special harnesses, would be manned by volunteers among the children who did not see this as arduous work but simply fun, and there was always a rush in the morning to occupy a harness. Pulling the carts made them feel important and a part of the coming crusade and it was often difficult to keep at an even pace. Young boys are naturally competitive and they were always trying to race each other.

Father Hermann and I would take turns in manning one of the carts and upon arrival at the market I would sing, and he would give a short sermon and then take confessions, and thereafter conduct mass. Country folk, unless they live in a large village, seldom enjoy the services of a priest and so have few opportunities to confess and thereafter partake of the blessed bread and the wine, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Having been given the opportunity for confession and mass they gave generously. It was thereafter, when their consciences were once again clear, that they were heard to grumble.

Both church squares were now filled with child pilgrims and the older women worshippers of both St Mary's and St Martin's did the cooking, feeling themselves an essential and cheerful part of the impending crusade. We also gathered together a couple of hundred of the children, some girls but mostly boys, who were given lessons in rudimentary cooking.

If all this sounds well thought out, it wasn't – chaos abounded and then the alms box was stolen from near the sacristy of St Mary's on the Kapitol. It was a large sum of money, almost sufficient to purchase an ox wagon to carry the portable altar the archbishop had donated as well as the huge cauldrons needed for making soup and the bags of flour donated for baking bread on the journey to Jerusalem. Father Hermann was deeply anguished by the crime, as he felt personally responsible, it being his church, the alms box having been taken in front of his beloved Virgin's eyes. He thought this a particularly bad omen. But Nicholas seemed infuriatingly unconcerned.

‘Nicholas, don't you understand? We are done for!' I yelled at him.

He smiled. It was a smile he was increasingly seen to wear, halfway between saint and precocious brat, and I was beginning to hate it. ‘Nay, Sylvia, God wishes us to have faith. When the time comes He will provide.'

‘Horseshit!' I yelled angrily. ‘What? Manna from heaven?'

Nicholas shrugged, ignoring the expletive. ‘He has done so once before,' he said disingenuously. ‘Are we not
also
departing for the Promised Land?'

My nerves were already frayed, beside me Father Hermann was wringing his hands and bemoaning our fate and this stupid boy was looking at me smug as a bug in a sacristy rug. ‘God requires us to plough the field and plant the seed before he does the growing!' I yelled. Then, looking at the priest's anguished and helpless demeanour and Nicholas with his superior little smile, I could contain myself no longer. ‘For God's sake, do something!'

I cried. It was the first time in my life I had blasphemed and I crossed myself immediately.

But neither seemed to have noticed, too amazed at my anger to register. ‘What can we do?' Nicholas said, with another infuriating shrug, although for the first time slightly on the defensive.

‘There are at least a thousand children in the square outside this church,' I yelled. ‘The alms box was large and sealed and not broken into but taken – the coin slot is too small even for a child's hand. Someone must have seen the thief carrying it out of the church!'

‘Good idea!' Nicholas said, then added pompously, ‘Why didn't I think of that?'

Father Hermann visibly brightened. ‘Ah, such a good mind!' he exclaimed, clapping his hands.

Ever since the archbishop's inquiry he had gained a respect for me that at times proved highly embarrassing, often deferring to me in front of others. A woman's opinion, apart from that on domestic matters, was seldom if ever sought, and I would note the look of surprise, even disbelief, on people's faces when he asked me to pronounce on some secular or religious matter.

That afternoon Nicholas was due to preach in the Church square. ‘I'll ask,' he promised.

There would be a number of incidents that I would deeply regret in the months to come, but this request to get the children to find the thief was to be the first of them. At the appointed time the Church square was packed with children so that all had to stand to hear Nicholas. His sermon was as fiery and inspiring as ever we'd come to expect and the spirit of the Lord Jesus seemed to invade the square. I sang as usual and, carried away in the euphoria, had entirely forgotten about my request to ask if anyone had seen the thief. Then I saw Father Hermann urgently whispering into Nicholas's ear and his nod in reply. Turning to the crowd, he held up his hands for silence.

He then explained the theft and in conclusion shouted, ‘This money belongs to Jesus! It has been stolen from Him! To steal from God's pocket is a mortal sin! I bid you to go out and find the thief and hang him in God's name and in the name of the Children's Crusade!'

A great roar rose from the crowd. My heart sank and I rushed over to where Nicholas stood. ‘Nay, Nicholas! Tell them they must bring the thief to us!'

‘I just did!' he protested in a querulous voice.

‘No, you said they must
hang
him . . . the thief!' I cried.

‘Well, yes, he has stolen from God!' Then, as if not understanding my concern, ‘What else? Hanging is the normal punishment for theft from the Church.'

‘Aye . . . the authorities, with the bishop's consent, not us.' I pointed down at the square. ‘Look at them, they are already a mob.' The compulsive feeling in the air was palpable. I had never seen a mob formed, but it was done almost in an instant. Filled with the spirit of redemption by Nicholas's sermon, they now had a God-given purpose. ‘Contagion', Father Paulus's word for it, was a perfectly apt description. As if one entity the children rushed into the two streets leading from the square. ‘Thief! Thief! Thief!' they chanted.

The evening meal was about to be served to a thousand hungry children, the only meal they received all day, yet heedless of their growling stomachs they felt compelled to find the thief. It was, I now realised, ridiculous – an angry mob crying out wildly was unlikely to flush out a lone thief hiding in the city, a veritable needle in a haystack.

With this notion I became calmer and said to Nicholas, ‘If they find him you
must
promise that he will be brought to justice by the authorities.'

‘Why?' he asked insouciantly. ‘He stole from us. May we not judge him ourselves in the name of Jesus our Lord?'

‘Nicholas, don't be stupid! Listen to me. There are several thousand children in Cologne sleeping in the streets, and with more arriving each day we are trying the patience of the city. Already there are complaints of theft from the market stalls and shops. Now, what will they think of this rampaging, angry mob? If we should catch this thief and hang him that will be the end of it for the Children's Crusade. No one will feel safe and we will not have the archbishop's blessing or the cooperation of the city.'

He seemed to suddenly make up his mind. ‘I should be leading them!' he cried out urgently.

I grabbed him about the waist. ‘Nay, don't, Nicholas!'

‘Leave me alone!' he lashed out angrily with his arms. ‘I know what I'm doing! Jesus tells me!'

Father Hermann now had him in a neck-lock. ‘No!' he said. ‘No, you're not going, Nicholas!'

The resistance suddenly left his body and he collapsed on the steps and commenced to weep. ‘Nobody cares!' he sobbed, and his eyes seemed to go vacant, the almost supernatural energy of the previous days gone. In front of our eyes Nicholas had sunk back into one of his states of despondency.

I tell you this because it is always made out that Nicholas of Cologne, while only fourteen years old, was a strong and charismatic leader. And it was true, when the spirit of the Lord possessed him he was irrepressible and irresistible. But when, as he put it, the devil visited him, he was listless and possessed of a constantly despairing mood. We had learned that no amount of cajoling would restore him to his previous self and that it must come about in his own time.

When these despairing turns occurred, Father Hermann would allow him to stay in a small cell in the crypt of St Mary's that was occasionally used by priests to rest during the day or by a visiting monk. It contained a bed, a small table and an oil lamp, and we would bring Nicholas his food, and a clay pan so that he might defecate. After a few days of solitude he would ask me to obtain a magic mushroom and then, emerging from its trance, he would slowly regain his energy until he was once again the fiery leader.

A part of our consternation at the theft of the alms box was that we proposed to build a dark, covered section on the ox wagon we hoped to purchase so when these so-called ‘devil moods' possessed Nicholas he might be spared from the children who constantly sought him out. Now, without at least one wagon where he might rest during these periods of despondency, I was at a loss to know what we'd do when his zeal failed. For now we could explain his absence by saying that he had gone to pray for God's guidance on the forthcoming Children's Crusade. These periods free of his preaching were even useful as they freed us to make the countless arrangements needed for the departure to Jerusalem.

Alas, I had been wrong about the ability of the mob to find the thief. The eyes of children are everywhere and I should have known that street children, as a matter of survival, see everything. One of the children, a boy named Stefan, returning from the woods where he had been setting traps for songbirds, came across a man with only one good eye; the other a white sightless ball rolled back into his head. The man carried a box on his shoulder with the symbol of the cross painted on the side. A leather strap across his left shoulder was attached to a wineskin resting on his right hip. The boy was thirsty and hoped to beg a free tipple. With the box so marked he thought the man might be a pilgrim, perhaps a country bumpkin and so an easy mark. Ever artful at coercion Stefan had suggested that the box looked heavy and asked politely what it might contain. The man halted and then sighed and explained that his woman had lost a child and that the box had been intended as its cradle, that it now contained the dead child wrapped in swaddling cloth and he wished to bury it in the woods as it had been born prematurely and did not yet possess a soul.

The boy was curious why the man didn't simply throw the stillborn child into the Rhine or, as was more often the case, into the fetid and stinking waters of the
Blaubach.
I am reminded that this former method of disposal was so common that there exists a child's rhyme that goes:

Dead children

not yet consecrated,

hang on hooks

the devil's baited.

Make them dust.

Make them ashes.

Turn them into

muddy splashes!

A child thus born

with Satan's kiss

must needs be food

for hungry fish!

The boy Stefan, pointing once more to the box, asked, ‘If it is not baptised why not throw it in the river? Why bury it in a box with the holy cross upon it?'

‘Ah! A worthy question,' the man replied, then shaking his head sadly, he said, ‘This is the fourth child we have lost stillborn and by painting a cross upon its cradle my good frau and I hoped that God, in His infinite mercy, would this time bless us with a healthy infant.'

Seeing an opportunity the boy replied in a consoling voice, ‘Aye, my good and pious friend, you may be sure that God will hear your prayers next time.' Then he added, as if a mere afterthought, ‘Come, let us drink to the health of your next child!' He smiled disarmingly and pointed to the wineskin. ‘A prayer to God and a drink to ward off the devil's evil eye. What say you, eh?'