Sylvia (51 page)

‘Thank you, Lord Jesus,' I prayed aloud and then walked, turning sideways to go through the narrow door, along the small corridor, then turned frontwards when into the bigger passage and then down the broad stairs.

I began to sing a Gregorian chant, my voice echoing into the great beams of the entrance hall, punctuated by the lugubrious cawing of the crows seated on the cross and others whirling around the ceiling. Servants came running and stopped in their tracks when they saw the cross of crows. Some fell to their knees and made the sign as I walked unhindered out of the bishop's palace. I could feel the eyes of the awed and frightened servants upon my departing back as I walked, my footsteps making a crunching sound on the gravel path leading to the gate. Still singing I passed the sheltering elm tree. When I was well clear and some distance down the road, I stopped and sent the crows up into the sky and fell to my knees and thanked my precious Saviour for my rescue.

Two hours later as the sun was setting, turning the Rhine into a sheet of burnished copper and the fetid
Blaubach
, struck at a different angle, into a river of gold, I arrived back in Cologne, weary and hungry. After eating bread and smoked fish and drinking a little summer wine, I went to St Mary's on the Kapitol to see if I might find Father Hermann and to visit Nicholas. I had cried most of the way back to the city and wished only to return to my quarters with the wrestler's widow to hide my head and to sleep. I knew myself emotionally exhausted but was aware that I must first seek out the two priests and hear how they had fared with the bishop and, as well, look in to see Nicholas.

Arriving at the church I peeped in the door and saw Father Hermann in the sacristy praying to the figurine of the Virgin, so I went first to visit Nicholas in the crypt, to try to persuade him to come up and breathe the evening air. I found him listless and moribund and not to be encouraged. To every positive suggestion I made came a negative and despondent reply. I lacked the strength to persist. It was then that he told me the news of both priests and how they had fared with the bishop. Father Hermann had been to see him to ask him to pray for my safety and told him what had occurred at their interview.

‘Father Hermann can't come,' Nicholas began in a toneless voice.

‘Can't come where?' I asked.

‘The crusade. The bishop has forbidden him.'

‘But we
must
have a priest,' I exclaimed, alarmed. ‘A priest carries the authority and respect we need!' I was depending on Father Hermann, an imposing figure of a man, just the sort to approach town dignitaries and their like when beseeching alms or help along the way. His bombast and forthcoming nature would impress any town or village priest we met and press him into service on our behalf. ‘What of Father Paulus?' I asked.

‘I cannot say, I haven't seen him, he must have gone directly back to St Martin's.'

I had never thought that Father Paulus would accompany us and he had never indicated that he wished to do so. He would be a poor substitute for Father Hermann, being small, mousy and much too timid of life. He didn't preach, was half deaf and not the sort who could cajole or intimidate a local priest. I had seen him after they'd been with the bishop and it was plain that he'd been reduced to tears. He was not the type we'd need for our spiritual authority or guidance.

‘We go without the blessing of the Church,' Nicholas said with a hopeless shrug.

There was no point in even talking to him when he was down like this. While his moods varied when he was in his despondency, some, as was now the case, were worse than others. One of the grandmothers who helped with the feeding in the square brought him his evening meal and I left soon afterwards. I would usually stay with him and encourage him to eat and try to restore him to a lighter mood, but now knew myself too weary and anxious and also discouraged by the latest news.

My stomach began to knot and I felt quite ill as I thought about the task that lay ahead. Two thousand children waited for our departure, with more arriving every day. We had no priest as our spiritual guide, a leader who sat all day in a monk's cell staring at the wall, no carts to transport the few bags of flour and smoked fish we had stored, and a vengeful bishop who would, if he could, destroy our every endeavour.

I began to doubt that this crusade was the result of a miracle I had myself witnessed and been a part of, or that God had so clearly spoken to me and told me that I must be beside Nicholas as he led us to Jerusalem. Perhaps others, such as the abbot who had begged me to have no part in this ‘absurdity' of a children's pilgrimage, were correct in their advice that we should abandon this crazy idea of a Children's Crusade. Who then would send these children home? How would they respond to the news, their faith in Christ's word forever after questioned as they returned disillusioned to their homes or hovels or the dark alleys of the city?

I looked in at the sacristy to see that Father Hermann was still at it, moaning and mumbling, sighing, crying and praising. When he went into one of his ecstatic sessions with his beloved Virgin Mary he would only rise at Matins. There would often be two red patches where his white habit was bloodstained at the knees, caused by the all-night vigils spent with the Mother of God in prayer.

I knew that I myself should pray for guidance. It was not in my nature to despair, but the day had been an anxious and traumatic one and Nicholas and his news had added to my depression. I could not clear my head of the sudden and terrible fear I had felt at the threat the two brutes had made to rape me. The image of my snorting, pumping father persisted in my head. This interchanged with the perfidy of a bishop of the Church who would allow these oafs to violate a young maid's virtue for his own carnal satisfaction or revenge and to corrupt a small child whose only earthly desire was to work in praise of God.

Evensong was over and the church was deserted. The faint and familiar smell of incense reached my nostrils. Dipping my fingers absently into the holy-water font I crossed myself and then began to walk down the centre aisle, my footsteps on the marble flagstones causing a hollow sound that matched my sense of all-aloneness. I knelt before the statue of our Lord, intending to pray for guidance. But no words came. Not even the familiar Latin prefaces to praising God that little children can recite with alacrity. It was as if I was suddenly struck dumb, all sensibility having deserted. My spirit emptied. Then rising from deep within me, as if the first trickle of a stream or drops of sudden rain, rose the notion of a song. At first, it was only the tremulous sounds where I didn't recognise words. Then, all at once, they flooded into my mind and possessed my heart. It was a hymn composed by the Abbess Hildegard, whose beautiful Gloria I had been forbidden to sing while at the convent, but which I had stored silently contained within my very being. As the folded song arrived and opened upon my tongue I felt myself lifted from my knees and looking into Christ's glorious face, my hands clasped in prayer to glorify His image, I stood before His holy presence and began to sing.

I cannot say how long I stood and sang in praise, but only that I was transported and, as if imagined, I could clearly hear the sound of a heavenly flute, more beautiful than ever I had heard before. It lifted my voice and carried the notes forward and each phrase seemed to accentuate the beauty of the hymn. When at last I could sing no more I opened my eyes and turned to see that the entire church was now filled with children and that the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the erstwhile ratcatcher, stood directly to my front. He smiled and brought his pipe to his lips, turned and with a cheeky nod bade me follow him. Then he piped a tune I did not know, no doubt one he'd learned in France, most beauteous and haunting in its sound. As we passed each pew the children rose and followed us silently into the square outside, enchanted by the ratcatcher's magic flute.

All the doubts in my heart and mind disappeared. Christ Jesus, the blessed Saviour of mankind, had answered my silent cry of despair. I now knew that He intended that there should be a Children's Crusade and, moreover, I knew as well its sacred purpose. With children there would not be slaughter, greed or avarice, no jealousy, nor rape or pillage justified in the name of a God who watched and wept for man's inhumanity to man. Not even the vainglorious and presumptuous papal promise of sins forgiven would be needed to set our feet and will our hearts for the Holy Land. Only the true spirit of love, as only a child may love, without guile or thought of gain or promise of redemption.

With Reinhardt back I no longer felt alone and my spirits soared. He was a great organiser and fell to the task with alacrity. I had no need to ask him to accompany us, for he seemed immediately to act as if such an event as a crusade would be impossible to accomplish without his presence. When I asked him about his French lover he shrugged. ‘
C'est la vie,
it lasted long enough so that I might take lessons on the flute with his elderly uncle, a grand master of France, and, as well, learn their mannered ways. Their court is influenced by the Italian way,' he explained. ‘In decorum it contains many niceties I shall teach you. My dear, you shall be as well tutored in the ways of society as any princess in Germany.'

I laughed, glancing down at my coarsely woven linen shift and rough boots. ‘I doubt I'll need these dainty manners where we're going, ratcatcher. I see you still wear high heels?'

‘I confess, you look frightful, Sylvia. What on earth have you done to your hair! Rats' tails and knots and dull as dishwater!' he exclaimed, then added gallantly, ‘But still somehow you remain the very prettiest of maids. To answer your question, heels were my contribution to the French culture and with them buckles.' He pointed to his pointy-toed boots. ‘See!' I saw that they each contained a square silver buckle. ‘They are all the rage in the court of France and I am much admired there and nicknamed “The Royal Boots 'n' Buckles”,' he boasted, then laughed as if at this absurdity.

‘If you are not careful, they will soon enough be admired equally here and you will promptly be up-ended in a muddy street in Cologne and your pretty boots with silver buckles stolen from your feet while you rub your silly ratcatcher's head. If you were so well regarded by the King of France, why then did you come back to Germany?' Nothing had changed, it was still the old ratcatcher, ever posing as the pretty knight or attempting to seem a high-lofty, someone of a status birth had not granted him, yet all the while still capable of laughing at himself.

He looked suddenly serious, a very serious condition for someone who seldom looked serious. ‘Not Germany, Sylvia. I came back to you. I love you the most of all. Now that you are no longer Christ's bride I have returned to be at your side. My flute has never played as well as it did in St Martin's square. Without your voice it lacks the magic touch.'

It was my turn to be serious. ‘Reinhardt, we do not share the same proclivity. I cannot be your mistress when you have no need for one.' I smiled. ‘I am now grown up and I have needs of my own.'

‘Nay, nay, nay! You get me wrong, my dear,' he cried out in alarm. ‘I am much too much the scallywag and not to be trusted in such connubial matters. Every day I see a new bottom and think it tops.'

‘On tops!' I corrected, laughing.

He clapped his hands in delight. ‘See! That's just it! With you I am myself. It is you, our music and the comfort of your company I crave. Oh, how very much I have missed these three things.'

‘Then you may have them with pleasure,' I said laughing, knowing that I had greatly missed the same three things. ‘I too have missed you, ratcatcher. Missed you very much.'

‘Then you will let me come?'

‘To Jerusalem?'

‘Aye, my faith is poor but my flute is rich with the encouragement of hymns of praise, and my tongue is no less lively and can tell a tale that will soften any heart and open the most reluctant purse on behalf of this holy venture.'

‘Thank you. I need you for more than just piping as right now we're in a dreadful mess,' I confessed. ‘The bishop hates us. Nicholas, our fiery leader, sits helpless and forlorn staring at the wall. Father Hermann is forbidden to accompany us. We lack the two wagons we must have for transport, the food we have will last less than two days and more children are arriving every day from all over Germany.'

‘Hmm! My instinct tells me to run away at once.' He smiled. ‘I can see I have arrived just in time. May I sojourn with you tonight? Do you still stay with the wrestler's widow?'

‘Aye, there is room enough.'

‘Then let us depart and on the morrow, I promise, things will be better and we shall, as of old, begin together to untie the calamitous knots in this hangman's rope of circumstance.'

I sighed. ‘If this is how the French speak, can you not simply say in the plain-speaking German way, tomorrow will be better?'

But the following day proved, if anything, to be worse. I awoke well rested and with my spirits lifted. With the Pied Piper of Hamelin (as Reinhardt again insisted he be termed) at my side I felt much more confident. It was wonderful to have someone whom I could trust and talk to. For all his frippery, buckled boots and nonsense, he was a born organiser and never short of ideas. On the way to St Mary's to meet Father Hermann and get the carts, I informed him of our progress. Or perhaps – a better description – our lack thereof, showing him the few bags of corn and racks of salted fish and a small pile of blankets we'd been given and had stored for us in a pious merchant's yard. ‘It is not enough to feed them for a single day,' I said, laughing to hide my anxiety.