Sylvia (59 page)

All I could think to say in reply was, ‘Master Israel, I solemnly promise, no Jew will suffer or die in the Children's Crusade as long as I remain alive.'

When Nicholas had been presented with his green cross he had cried out, ‘But the crusader's cross is
always
red!'

I had anticipated his objection and had my reply prepared. ‘Stay a moment your opinion, Nicholas, and hear me out. No colour of blood spilled in Christ's name must tarnish the Children's Crusade. There is a good reason for this green cross. Think you now, all the other crusades are drenched in blood. This wilful killing that included women and children was always justified by the scarlet of the cross they wore on their tunics. But we are not as they were and go in peace and love and not to despoil the lands of the Saracen. The earth will remain green and bountiful after we have passed by and not be razed to the torch and desolated as our forebears were wont to do. We shall spill no blood upon this journey to Jerusalem! Our cross is green, the colour of verdancy and new growth and the sign of God's peace and goodwill.'

Nicholas clapped his hands, delighted with this new notion. ‘I shall make the cross of green, the green cross, a part of my sermon today. I shall explain how I have chosen green so we may rejoice in our intention and be ever mindful that we go in peace and joy; this cross shall be the symbol of the true nature of our divine intention.'

As in all other things, the idea of the green cross was appropriated by Nicholas to become his own inspiration. In his sermon, his reasons given were more eloquent and better explained than mine, so that the children rejoiced in this new green cross and knew themselves to be elevated in God's eyes by its symbolism. How, I wondered to myself, would Nicholas have felt had he known whence came the cloth that made the crosses? I still pray that Master Israel, now long dead, never knew how the canvas came to be used. At the time I comforted myself with the thought that, along with all the Jews of Cologne, on our day of departure he would have remained behind locked doors, so was unlikely to know about the crosses.

So taken was Nicholas by this colour green that when a rich burgher's wife, who was entranced by his preaching and the Children's Crusade, begged what she might do for him, he had asked for a monk's robe and cowl to be made in green wool. He now wore this garment when he preached at night and the effect was most prepossessing. With the cowl extended to the front his face was almost completely hidden in the dark interior. When he preached with his face in deep shadow he appeared much the mysterious messenger of an awesome God and the children waiting to hear him shivered in ecstatic anticipation.

We would eventually make the cover to the wagon with the hessian from the bags that had contained the bishop's corn and it served our purpose, though proved a miserable shelter in the wet. As for the banners, children are ever inventive in their scavenging and soon enough banners appeared everywhere with crude crow shapes stitched upon them. I later heard say that the women of Cologne, many of them the wives of rich burghers, had stitched them and given them as a contribution to the Children's Crusade. Many of them had seen their own children join, and our departure would prove both joyous and sad as parents bade them farewell not knowing if they would ever see them again.

To pay these parents homage I had arranged for those children from Cologne to lead us through the city gates with the Pied Piper of Hamelin piping them out, the ratcatcher having composed a special tune to pipe us from the city. The remainder of the children held back so the Cologne children might be the first to march away. How proud these children seemed as they passed the people who thronged the streets, many women weeping to see them go, though nothing would have prevented them from doing so as each one burned with the true faith. In the years to come and perhaps forever more, folk will tell of the Pied Piper of Hamelin's piping of the children.

We had taken the first steps to the Holy Land, and as we passed through the city gates folk called out as the naked women had first done that early spring morning in the square of St Martin's: ‘Our children in Jerusalem!' And now we understood the meaning of their nakedness, for we had departed for the Holy Land without money or weapons or armour, scarce any food or any means of protecting ourselves or of surviving. We had entered this crusade as naked babes, trusting only in God to deliver us to the gates of Jerusalem.

The ecstatic children blew on brass trumpets and carried their banners aloft and every child who didn't have a trumpet or a banner carried a wooden cross. All sang in praise of the heavenly Father as we departed during Pentecost on the eleventh hour of the thirteenth day of May in the year of our Lord 1212. In all, four thousand passed through the city gates and it was well into the afternoon before the last of the marching children left Cologne.

On that day we had risen long before first light and Nicholas, wearing his new green monk's robe and cowl, had delivered a final sermon lit with a flaming torch on the steps of St Martin's. We had partaken of our last meal, a feast of bread, gruel and ale, though we soon ran out of ale. Then Father Hermann conducted a final mass and often but a single crumb of bread was placed upon the tongue of a child who was old enough to partake of Holy Communion. The younger children, many of them no more than the age of six, received a blessing, and so it was close to the eleventh hour before we were ready to leave.

Of great concern to me was that with Father Hermann's decision to stay at St Mary's we had no priest to attend to us on our journey. Apart from conducting mass, there was much a priest would be required to do, not the least of which was performing the last rites. I was not so naive as to think that none would perish on the way. Already there were a number of sick who had joined us, among them adults and women with small children, even some with babes at the breast. Whenever I came across the sick or those with children not old enough to take care of themselves I would exhort them to remain behind, explaining that even with God's blessing the journey would be long and hard to endure. But they were blinded by their faith, expecting that they would be miraculously cured when they reached the Holy Land. As for their children, had not Nicholas of Cologne preached that on the journey to Jerusalem their children would feast on manna from heaven cast to their feet by God with the morning dew? Moreover, even though we would soon find the Church turned against us, it was unseemly that a crusade should depart for Jerusalem without a priest in attendance.

Then, as the wagon passed through the city gates with much shouting out and singing and trumpets blaring, I saw that Father Paulus walked beside it. Hurrying towards him I shouted to make myself heard, ‘Do you journey a small way with us, Father?'

He cupped his ear. ‘Eh?' Then he shrugged and shook his head, indicating that there was too much noise for him to hear. I walked beside him and it was not until we were well clear of the city that we could converse. ‘How far do you journey with us, Father?' I asked a second time, my mouth held close to his ear.

‘How far?' he asked, bemused. ‘Why, to Jerusalem, of course! I shall enter the Holy Sepulchre with you, Sylvia,' he said, his pale blue eyes shining with conviction. He reached down and took up the small wooden cross that hung suspended on twine from his neck and kissed it. ‘Then, for Father Hermann I have promised I shall say a prayer at the crypt of the church near Gethsemane.' I could see that he was as excited as any child, in fact, himself in this matter a small child, convinced that everything will happen exactly as he imagined.

Hallelujah! We now have our priest!
I thought joyously, though perhaps not the one I had supposed we would need. Despite his timorous demeanour in the face of senior Church authority, Father Hermann would have been ideal. He was a hearty type who could be somewhat the gentle bully while capable of cajoling and also disciplining the wayward. He was an imposing size and a respected man of God with a reputation for holiness and visions and would not have been afraid to face the town councillors and priests in the towns and villages we would enter. Alternatively, Father Paulus seemed the least likely to succeed at these tasks imagined for our crusade priest to perform. He was near deaf, did not preach, was reluctant to officiate at mass, and seemed confused by children and unable to converse with them or, for that matter, most adults. But for the study of Latin and his ability as a scribe he was completely lacking in persuasion, and his personality, if described, might be said to be washed out and ineffectual. I loved him dearly but expected little of practical help from him.

However, I reminded myself that it was Father Paulus among the mice at the archbishop's inquiry who had stood up to suggest that the naked women were overcome by a contagion. This single word, ‘contagion', and the subsequent illustration he had given concerning a mob attacking a Jewish moneylender, had turned the inquiry in our favour. Perhaps there was more to this little man than I thought, though my commonsense told me I was clutching at straws; his faded blue eyes, pale freckled skin and sparse ginger hair peppered with grey formed a physiognomy that seemed to replicate almost exactly his character. At best Father Paulus was a shy, loyal and unworldly priest who craved isolation and peace and who wished the egregious babble around him to be drowned out by the clanging of church bells.

On the first day we walked only a few hours until sunset and camped in a field on the outskirts of a small village the name of which, for the life of me, I cannot remember, even though it was important being our first place of sojourn for the night. Many of the smaller children were overcome with exhaustion and slept where they'd halted, on the side of the road beside the field, too weary to crawl the smallest distance into it.

Before we'd left Cologne I had bade the sick come to the wagon each evening as I had stored large quantities of herbal remedies and ointment for use on the journey to Jerusalem. But on the first day away and just three hours journey from Cologne, my heart sank when I beheld the extent of the children that needed attention. We had barely left and already there were several dozen who had some complaint. I knew we would be on the road for at least half a year and now, but one day out, we were already busy with the sick. My only hope was that this was a hardening process, that the children would soon be calloused to the blisters and their stomachs grow accustomed to the conditions so that they were no longer possessed by the need for frequent evacuation of their bowels or given to vomiting.

Previous to leaving I had created a group of young girls and taught them what herbs to gather and then how to make the basic unguents and ointments and the various medications for the stomach and ailments of the bowel. I don't know how we would have managed without the knowledge Frau Sarah had taught me and I thanked her daily in my prayers. The girls were much taken by our secret women's knowledge and soon proved most proficient in the basics of efficacious remedies and eventually became the very backbone to the task of treating the sick. They took great pride in the name Father Paulus gave them, for he called them the ‘healing angels'. Each morning before we left and again at night it was to become customary to treat the sick. And while I knew that this would be a busy time, I had no idea that we would soon come to call it ‘The Hospice of the Dying' where, too often, we were required to act as the angels of death.

I recall that first morning how the villagers arrived to wonder at so large a throng, some bearing food and all curious and much overcome with the sacred nature of the journey. Alas, the following morning they would lose all their children, the ploughboy and the shepherd, the goatherd and the goosegirl, the milkmaid, the swineherd and the children who laboured in the fields. All would forsake their homes to join the crusade. It was the first indication of things to come.

Before departing Nicholas preached what for him was a short sermon. A mist hung over the field and the children's clothes were drenched with the morning dew as we departed, the children singing hymns and blowing their trumpets to the glory of God.

Nicholas was on fire with his message of hope and his energy knew no bounds. He had spent the night praying and possessed less than three hours sleep, yet seemed the most refreshed of all of us. There was no containing him as he walked among groups of children on the road who would burst into praising and song as he approached. The fever (or was it a contagion?) swept over all of us as we marched that first full day.

We had received a gift of four bags of corn from the village to replenish what we'd used, as sustenance for the smallest children and to feed the mothers with babies to keep the milk at their breasts. But ‘gift' was a relative word. It had been a hard bargaining process aimed at their collective conscience and it was Reinhardt, by piping the rats from their precious stores of grain, who would eventually shame them into giving.

This reluctance to give was in part due to the weather. The rains had not come and the late spring weather was exceedingly hot for the time of year, so that the newly planted corn had not progressed well and stood less than two hands high. These were peasants and they knew the signs of a coming hardship and were aware that if a summer of drought was to follow, even four bags of corn might prove the difference between survival and starvation. ‘You will save more than four bags if you are rid of your rats,' Reinhardt had pointed out. In the end, it was this reasoning that had finally persuaded them to part with their precious corn.

As summer advanced and the drought continued, the ratcatcher was to strike his rat-ridding bargain on more than one occasion, though not always successfully. He would rid a place of rats and then the townspeople would go back on their promise of grain, often using the scurrilous excuse that his magic flute was stealing their children away from them. In fact, the children could not be prevented from joining us and I despaired as their numbers increased with each new town or city we visited. It was soon obvious that we could not hope to feed the multitude or even the smaller children or mothers with infants and that each must fend for himself.