Sylvia (71 page)

I knew at once that I had seen a special moment in a man's life, that moment when God restores his faith. But I wasn't a priest and wasn't sure whether I should console him for his wicked past or congratulate him on his new redemption. ‘Father, what has been done cannot be undone except by the grace of God.' It was all I could think to say.

‘We will begin our repentance at once. I will send every priest from the monastery to find your dying children and we will give them extreme unction.'

His sudden and unexpected repentance and desire to make amends had quite the opposite effect on me to the subservient gratitude he might have expected. If I had spent my allotment of tears for one lifetime I had not used up my anger. I suddenly found myself consumed by a terrible fury and a bitterness that rose up in me and which I felt I could not contain a moment longer. My sensibility told me to bide my tongue, that my first duty was to the living, to finding food for our children. The thought of our beautiful children, their tiny broken bodies reduced to skin and bone, their arms and legs thin as twigs, covered in suppurating sores, thrown into a common pit and covered with quicklime without a prayer was too much to contain a moment longer. ‘May God forgive me!' I shouted, then pointed to a small heap of rags that lay against the wall near the steps of the church. ‘When your two brutes dragged me away this morning that precious child who belongs to God wished only to hear a few final words of comfort before passing from this earth. Now he is dead! He died alone under a blazing sun with no one to give him even a sip of water.

Now he will be discarded like a lump of shit, thrown into a lime pit in unconsecrated ground. You and your fellow priests will answer for this on the final Day of Judgement! May your souls rot in hell!'

Father Pietro fell to his knees. ‘Please, please, you must forgive us!' he begged.

I could feel the devil tugging further at my temper. The mob had never seen a priest go down on his knees in obeisance to a simple peasant maid. Or perhaps they thought I was an angel and he must bow down to me, and so they did the same, hearing only the Latin tones, the speech of heaven, contained in my furious voice. ‘We will depart this vile place as hungry as we entered, but we shall not beg for your food, you can stick your charity up your arse!' To speak thus to a priest as a peasant might to his goatherd was nigh blasphemy, but I no longer cared. If my temper landed me in hell I knew I'd have the satisfaction of his company there and with him all the priests and monks and clerics and ugly little monkey bishops who had scorned God's children. I also knew I would continue there to scream my anger at these hypocritical sons of bitches, my voice rising above the moans and cries of the condemned and adding to the roaring flames of hell.

Father Pietro now lay prostrated on the flagstones, weeping like a child, with Brothers Bruno and Aloysius bending over him not knowing what to do. I must say he was making a proper job of his contrition but I remained too angry to care. ‘Take the priest into the church, let him weep in front of the Virgin – maybe She will forgive him!' I said scornfully in German to Brother Bruno.

To my surprise he straightened up and turned to the crowd. ‘Who among you will feed a hungry child?' he called out.

A hundred hands shot into the air and a roar of ‘Ayes' followed. The townsfolk surged towards the steps beckoning our children to come to them. Reinhardt, as usual, took control. ‘Go, eat!' The children, who throughout had not spoken a word except to sing, now gave a joyful shout. ‘We will all meet here at Evensong, you may go,' he said dismissing them. The children could not contain their joy as they ran down the steps knowing that on this day their bellies would be satisfied.

The two monks lifted the sobbing Father Pietro and led him into the church. Reinhardt shook his head. ‘Phew! At least our children will eat. Then we must be gone, Sylvia. I fear we have worn out our welcome.' He grinned. ‘Every word a vituperative gem, well done!' He saw the sudden tears well in my eyes. ‘No, don't cry – if I live a hundred years I will not hear a more justified and better chastisement.'

‘What will they do to us?' I asked in a small voice, my anger replaced with concern.

But as if in reply Sister Infirmaress appeared, and Brother Bruno, returned from the church, translated. ‘Come, we will bathe and feed you. May I call you Sylvia?' she asked kindly.

I turned to Reinhardt. ‘What will you do?'

He laughed. ‘Go, Sylvia, there are a hundred folk here who will feed me, they think me an angel's consort.'

‘Sire, we would be honoured if you would take sustenance with us at the monastery,' Brother Bruno said.

The ratcatcher touched me on the arm. ‘I think we're going to be all right,' he said.

And to my surprise we were. The nuns allowed me to bathe and I scrubbed until I felt as though I had removed the top layer of my skin, and when I sat in the sun to dry my hair the sisters came out to marvel at the colour. When I was given a brush to pull through the tangles my hair proved thin and came out in tufts and had quite lost its shine and vigour, yet they collected it as a keepsake, each a small handful as if it was a treasure to be coveted. I recalled the strong golden strands that had fallen so carelessly to the wet floor when Sister Angelica had gleefully hacked it off at the convent of Disibodenberg.

My stomach had grown unaccustomed to less than a handful of food per day and often not even this much, and despite the tut-tutting and clucking of the kitchen sister, I was able to eat only the smallest portion of the bread and fish she placed on my wooden platter. The wine I needed to water down considerably, yet it still made my poor head spin.

They clothed me in a nun's habit but without the wimple. My boots had been brought over from the church but they were pronounced unrepairable and I was given a new pair. How elegant and safe I felt in a new petticoat and my black linen habit and stout ankle boots with new wooden soles that would surely see us to Jerusalem, though I knew in my heart and soul that this destination was no longer possible unless a miracle should happen. Even then it would take a lot of persuasion to restore my faith in miracles or in messages from angels. I possessed but one desire and this was to save the lives of the Silent Choir of God's Little Children. I told myself I would keep my faith with Nicholas and go to meet him in Genoa, but that these children were no longer to be regarded as his responsibility – if ever he had thought they were. I was no longer willing to trust in the divinely received angel's message that I had come to realise I had helped to instigate with the use of Frau Sarah's magic mushrooms. If but one child had died as a result of his vision, it would have been one too many. But a thousand precious little souls had perished in our wake. As long as God permitted me to live, I knew I could not do the penance required to account for my role in this terrible disaster. I no longer believed that the blessed boy prophet could take us safely to the Holy Land.

Moreover, I knew that we must somehow seek to break the sacred
vota
, that is, our children must be released from the oath we had taken with Father Hermann to undertake a crusade to the Holy Land. I might have lost my faith in miracles but I knew that if we could achieve this end it would only be by a miracle, for the Pope in Rome was the only person in all of Christendom who could rescind the oath we had taken in the name of God. Brother Dominic had once said that the Pope was God's representative on earth but it was pointless trying to see him as he spoke only to his Master.

But if His Holiness was an ultimate challenge, I faced a more immediate one. I knew that I must eat humble pie and apologise to Father Pietro for my wicked temper and the way I had spoken to him. If he had had no cause to put me to the whipping post on the first occasion, on this one he had every right to do so. I could not believe that I had willingly used such foul language and knew that it was the devil that lurked within me that had brought it about. I had never in my entire life openly used such words, though it would be untrue to claim that I had not tested them often in my mind or said them in my thoughts. Sister Angelica and the abbess at the convent of Disibodenberg had been frequent but unknowing recipients. To use them openly and with malice at any time was deeply sinful. To use them in Latin against a priest was beyond any possible redemption. I knew that I must confess, beg God for forgiveness and with a glad heart accept any penance demanded of me. But first I must undergo the most difficult task of all. I must face this priest and apologise. Deep within me a small voice cried out that I had meant every word I'd said and given the same provocation would say them again. But I also knew that I must take the responsibility for my profanity and my wilful anger.

While he had prostrated himself in front of me, momentarily overcome by remorse, I wasn't so foolish that I did not know Father Pietro was a man and a priest, the bishop in everything but in name. He was arrogant and powerful and his epiphany on the steps of the church was likely to prove a temporary relapse into a piety of some distant youthful past. After I had bathed, received a change of raiment and eaten, I had been granted an interview with the abbess, Sophia of Piemonte, an educated woman who spoke Latin, and during our talk I had asked that she intercede and find out if I might see Father Pietro.

‘He is, at his kindest, still a difficult man, Sylvia,' she sighed. ‘When I have need to petition the bishop, we all say a special prayer that God might grant Father Pietro an even temper on the day.' Then she added with a grin, ‘I will send Sister Infirmaress and use the excuse that she has come to dress his wounds. She has no fear of anyone except perhaps the Pope and God, though I doubt even the former.'

How different this Abbess Sophia of Piemonte to the bitch . . . oops! I mean, of course, the abbess at the convent at Disibodenberg.

Sister Infirmaress returned shaking her head. ‘He is not himself, Mother Superior. I think those ravens, for all the misfortune they bring a soul, seem to have pecked some courtesy into his stubborn head. He will see Sylvia with pleasure and at her convenience.'

‘My goodness, he is most certainly sick!' the abbess exclaimed, first having politely translated the nun's remarks.

‘Thank you, I will go immediately,' I said.

I was about to take my leave when the abbess said, pointing to my nun's habit, ‘Sylvia, the nuns who brought you one of our gowns spoke of the sign of the fish, the sign of our precious Saviour on your back. Do you think? I mean, would it be possible to see it?'

‘It is only a birthmark, Mother Superior.' I turned my back and dropped the top of the robe from my shoulders and back and heard the abbess gasp.

‘Nay, Sylvia, it is more, much more. Then the Miracle of the Rats and the Birds is true, also the ravens!'

I adjusted the gown and turned to find her on her knees with her hands clasped in prayer. ‘Please, please, I am just a humble maid. Do not think any more of me!' I cried. I had long since given up explaining the matter of the rats and the birds. The more I explained, the more doubtful people thought the explanation. People want miracles and when they are denied they become very upset. Just as the Abbess Sophia, despite being told the fish was a birthmark, would not accept this explanation, she would also not have accepted the explanation for the so-called miracles. Although, I confess, I had no idea why the ravens attacked Father Pietro and the troop captain of the Bishop of Koblenz.

She rose to her feet. ‘We are truly blessed to have you with us, Sylvia,' she said, and I could see tears in her eyes as she smiled at me. ‘I promise you, no pilgrim child will henceforth pass through this way without comfort and succour.' I did not tell her that we were the last, nor point out, as I had in no uncertain terms to Father Pietro, that charity should be given without thought of motive or gain, especially to hungry and dying children.
Don't get
bitter, Sylvia,
I reproached myself.

Father Pietro welcomed me with a smile. He seemed in demeanour quite a different man from the scowling priest of only this morning, and thanked me profusely for what I'd done for him and the parish of Piacenza. I attempted to apologise for my remarks and in particular for my language. Seemingly completely mollified he said, ‘We don't know what Christ said to the moneylenders when he drove them from the temple, but I feel sure he did not spare the whip the tongue becomes when anger is well justified.'

‘It is most forgiving and gracious of you, Father,' I said humbly, unable to believe that this was the same priest who had first read out the indictment of the German children and the bishop's refusal to grant them a final anointing. ‘How is His Lordship, the bishop?' I now asked tentatively.

‘He has sprained his wrist, a few scratches and bruises, it is nothing,' Father Pietro said dismissively. He tapped his cheek and then his neck, indicating the raven pecks. ‘Sometimes things happen to shake us from our lethargy and to restore our faith in God,' he said humbly. He cleared his throat. ‘Sylvia, we cannot make amends for what has happened but I have done all I may to improve the situation. Our priest, clerics and monks are out in the town seeking any sick child from your pilgrimage. They will give those who are still alive the final anointing and those, alas, who are dead we will bury in consecrated ground. The church will create a special place, it shall be named “The Field of Forever Dreaming” and it will be where God's little children may lie and each shall be blessed with a stone cross. Henceforth, all the children who die in Piacenza will be buried with these precious pilgrims to the Holy Land, so they are forever honoured.'