Sylvia (63 page)

Now seeing the children encouraged by Nicholas's presence the ratcatcher said to me one morning, ‘Sylvia, we must preach again each night, the children must be given the hope they seemed to gain from Nicholas.'

I shrugged. ‘Reinhardt, how I wish you could with that pipe of yours summon him back to us. Alas, this time he seems completely lost. Every day I ask him if he wants the magic mushroom, but he shakes his head and will not return from his dark place.'

‘Nay, Sylvia,
you
must preach,' he said.

I looked at him astonished. ‘It is not my gift! I do not have this message from God.'

Reinhardt laughed. ‘But you have another gift worth just as much.'

‘What?'

‘Sylvia, you have a memory that never fails you. If I should ask you to repeat word for word every sermon Nicholas has given to the children or the townsfolk I know that you could do so.'

‘So?'

‘Well, you are also a gifted mimic, the best I've ever heard. I have seen you use Nicholas's voice in jest or when telling of something he has said and all present laugh, for it is as if he himself is speaking.'

‘Ah, but I am not Nicholas! The children will not accept me as their leader,' I protested.

‘How will they know?'

‘Because I'm a woman, stupid. I have blonde hair and blue eyes and, in case you haven't noticed, two rather pronounced bumps upon my chest.'

He laughed. ‘Nice but not so large that they may not easily be flattened by tying them tightly with a band of cloth.'

‘Reinhardt, the children know me! We, the healing angels, have ministered to them from the first day. I work with Father Paulus and with you to bury the dead and comfort the dying. They have heard me sing a hundred times! What? Must I pretend that Nicholas has used me as his medium and speaks through me?'

‘I hadn't thought of that. It might also work.'

‘So, what are you suggesting?'

‘At night, Sylvia. Preach to them at night, wearing Nicholas's robes, your face concealed deep within the cowl. You know every sermon and I'll vouch they cannot tell his voice from your version.'

I looked at him, astonished. ‘Do you think it will work?'

‘Of course!' he cried optimistically, then shrugged. ‘How will we know if we don't try?'

‘But if it fails?'

‘Then we shall use you as a medium as you suggested. It is nearly as good and requires less deception.'

He looked at me and saw I was frowning, not sure. ‘Sylvia, these children must be given some hope. You can do this, I know you can!'

‘Perhaps the medium, eh? That way there is less chance of being caught.'

‘Nay, please try the other first. If we can bring Nicholas back to lead them they will be much the stronger for it!' Reinhardt urged.

‘What think you, Father?' I asked loudly, turning to Father Paulus.

‘If we deceive we do so to God's glory and I am not troubled by this duplicity, but I think Reinhardt right, the presence of Nicholas himself will be much the stronger encouragement.'

We had reached the high mountains well above the tree line where bitter winds blew incessantly and the landscape consisted of scree, rock, coarse grasses and juniper bushes. The mountain passes were most dangerous to navigate, so that many children, weak with hunger and with their eyesight and their balance affected, plunged to their deaths in the chasms and roaring rapids below. We had been many days in the mountains and had reached the highest point and would soon start the descent into Italy. If we could but place a little more courage in each small heart we might save more from dying. And so the rumour was started that Nicholas would preach that night.

Earlier Reinhardt, Father Paulus and myself drew Nicholas aside and put the plan to him. Despite his despondency and to our chagrin he was opposed to it. ‘They have only one leader and it is me! I am the only one who has the divine right!' he sulked.

‘But, Nicholas, we accept this! We would not usurp your leadership, but instead show all the children that it persists,' Father Paulus explained.

‘They will know it isn't me!' Nicholas said in a churlish voice.

‘We will find out soon enough,' Reinhardt said brightly. ‘If they do, we are not much worse off. If they don't, then they will take great heart from your reappearance.'

Nicholas looked at me despairingly. ‘You know I cannot help this devil's time that comes upon me!'

‘Aye, Nicholas, but the children are dying as much for lack of heart as of starvation. We must try.'

He seemed to be thinking, then at last looked up and addressed me again. ‘This is a holy robe I wear. If you, a woman, should wear it, that would amount to sacrilege.' He shook his head slowly. ‘I'm sorry, I cannot allow it!'

‘Nay, Nicholas, that is not true!' Father Paulus said. ‘Garments are only holy if worn by the Christ figure, the Virgin, the apostles, St Paul and various saints and martyrs, though not all.'

‘What are you saying? That I am not among these?' Nicholas demanded to know. We all looked at each other, too confounded to reply. Then he said, ‘Am I not the one who had the vision of the angel who bore a message from our Lord Jesus that I should lead the children to Jerusalem? I do not see any other among you who can make this claim! Does this not entitle me? Are these robes I wear not sacred and blessed by God?'

He pointed angrily at me. ‘Now you would place them on the body of a
woman
!' He paused and shook his head vigorously as if trying to rid himself of an unpleasant thought. ‘I'm sorry, Sylvia, I must be plain-spoken in this matter. I cannot allow you to commit such a terrible blasphemy!'

Father Paulus was the first to recover and to find his voice. ‘Nicholas, it is not seemly that you speak of yourself as you do,' he chided, though gently. ‘It is for God to decide and the Church to proclaim any beatification and this is done
after
your death. In truth, until that time, we all remain mere mortals and your robe is not yet holy and may well be worn by any other.'

‘But by a woman!' Nicholas protested, plainly mortified. ‘A woman who bleeds . . . down there!'

If Father Paulus was shocked by this profanity, he didn't show it. The old Father Paulus would have run for his life, completely mortified, but this was a different person, a priest who had been through a baptism of fire and knew God would test him even further. He wasn't to be waylaid by a silly sensibility. ‘Aye, by Sylvia, who is your beloved friend. Our hope is that this small and harmless deception brings courage to the flock you lead. They are much in need of your encouragement and the sound of your voice. It is your voice and leadership that drives them onward and your honour and piety that is served.' Father Paulus, with the constant need to beg for food for his children, was also becoming an expert in persuasion.

Nicholas, confused by the compliment and forgetting his objection to me wearing his robe of but a moment or two ago, now looked at me, appealing. ‘It's not my fault! Tell them, Sylvia, tell them it is not my fault! I cannot speak! My tongue is tied by the devil! I cannot! I cannot! I must wait for Jesus to return!' His voice was now that of a small sobbing child trying to explain his hurt feelings to his mother.

I placed my arm about him and he began to sniff, then he said still in the choking little boy's voice, ‘But if you take my monk's robe I shall be cold!'

‘Nay, Nicholas, you shall have my sheepskin coat,' I comforted him.

I saw the expression on Reinhardt's face and gave him a quick cautionary look, restraining him from laughing at this transformation from would-be saint to frightened little boy. He had been converted by Nicholas's preaching, but when he saw him enter his dark place at a time he was most needed, Reinhardt had grown ever more impatient and seemed no longer taken in by the boy's power and mystique. ‘He sulks, hunched up like a crow in the wagon and now, without it, walks as if we are forcing him against his will. He says nothing, does nothing and we must call him blessed and our leader!' he had railed.

‘It is in his nature, either the one thing or the other. We must persist, the children will not go without him,' I had said lamely, knowing it seemed a poor excuse and that each day without him seemed to create more despair among the children.

Reinhardt had been the first to say it. ‘Is this right? Is this God's will? All the dying?'

Because I knew that deep in my heart I was asking myself the same questions, I had grown suddenly angry. ‘Go on . . . be gone! Get your arse out of here!' I had dismissed him with a backward wave of my hand. ‘Piss off! We don't need you! You're nothing but a Jonah!' Then I had started to wail.

But Reinhardt had not deserted us and seemed always cheerful and hopeful, and but for the time he suggested we leave the crusade and when he'd expressed these doubts, I had not seen his spirits down. Without him I dare not think how we would have endured. Whatever might be said of his sexual proclivities, which, in the eyes of the Church, sent him to certain and eternal damnation, he was the most courageous, forbearing and loyal man I have ever known.

That night we camped in two craters to protect us from the wind; both proved to be natural amphitheatres. Nicholas, dressed in my rough peasant's gown and well wrapped in my precious sheepskin coat, his head covered and my stave beside him, stood among the choir of healing angels where the children would expect to see me. In the gloaming, my face in shadow from the cowl, I preached once in each of the craters, my voice echoing in the surrounding cliffs and carrying to reach several thousand excited children.

The reaction was astonishing. The huge crowd, all hungry, nay gripped by starvation, some near to death, stood to cheer and pray and sing as if a light from heaven had shone down upon them. It was plain that not one among them, other than the choir of the healing angels, knew that it wasn't Nicholas of Cologne who preached to them. We had found a way to sustain our faith and that night we slept knowing that while a great deal of suffering lay ahead of us, we would cross these terrible peaks and passes and survive the thundering, rushing gorges and reach Italy beyond.

I preached each night for the next few days, by the end of which time we had passed the highest point and had almost reached the long, sloping countryside leading into a vast valley with green fields that, it seemed from a distance, were not stricken by drought. Our path across the mountains was littered with the bodies of the dead and we estimated some one thousand tiny souls had perished coming over them. Near seven thousand children remained as we approached the fertile valley that had now become Italy and would eventually lead us to the sea. Then we would miraculously cross to Constantinople, held by the Venetians and the home of the Byzantine Christians where we hoped we might get a friendlier reception. From there we would enter the lands of the Saracens and then to Jerusalem. It all still seemed hopeful and attainable. The last night before entering the valley I preached a final time and used again Nicholas's sermon of our goodwill when the almond trees would blossom in the spring.

Nicholas, the morning of the night I preached this last sermon, had asked me for the magic mushrooms and by late that evening had come out of his trance, his eyes bright again and his demeanour eager to continue. Throughout our journey we had fed him first; what little we had he ate as his entitlement and though he was not plump he lacked the skeletal look the rest of us wore from months on the road. Throughout the journey he had seemed impervious to the suffering around him. Once when I had spoken of it, wondering why God would let His precious children suffer so, he had looked at me, completely lacking in sentience and as if I had suddenly blasphemed. ‘It is their wickedness that kills them. Those who die are not worthy in God's eyes of attaining Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre. It is God's wish that they perish – they are the chaff that is winnowed from the good corn and you must not grieve for their souls, Sylvia.'

‘But they are children, too young to carry such sin in their hearts and they have come with us believing!' I protested.

‘We are all born in sin and only the pure in spirit will enter the Kingdom of God,' he said sanctimoniously, then added, ‘or be with me to see Jerusalem and to pray at the Holy Shrine.'

‘That is utter bullshit, Nicholas! They die for lack of food and care!' I cried out.

He'd shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Sylvia. I do not take responsibility for the dead. They are in God's merciful hands.'

‘First they are sinners and slain by God, now they are in His merciful hands? Make up your mind!' I cried angrily. But Nicholas did not see this ambiguity.
He will make a good priest
, I thought angrily to myself,
grabbing every sanctimonious catch-cry without
a thought for what he is saying, just a sentence mumbled, a hand
touching a head like a fly alighting here and there and everywhere, its
only purpose to buzz and land and move again
.

But if I begin to sound somewhat self-righteous, I have a confession to make. As I preached each night for the final days of our journey across the mountains I grew to enjoy the power it gave me. The adoring and worshipping children, despite their parlous condition, glued to my every word, were lifted, encouraged and strengthened by my (well, Nicholas's) sermons. While the voice I affected remained that of Nicholas, more and more the words were my own, my voice becoming bread and wine to the starving. I found myself carried away with my elucidation and the strength of my persuasive powers. I gloried in the ability I seemed to possess to make these children forget their misery for a few precious moments and to be transported to another, kinder world. It was exhilarating and I began to see how easily such arrogance and power over others could corrupt and how, like Nicholas, one might assume the mantle of the saints. I am ashamed to admit that the return of Jesus to once again possess the soul of Nicholas of Cologne left me jealous and resentful and I had need to ask Father Paulus to hear my confession.