Quest of Hope: A Novel (2 page)

The Order prowls the darkness, pressed and shadowed

By the millstone of its own craft,

And the groaning turn of seasons add but weight.

The lances of the stubborn sun are poised and sure,

But few precious beams do split the shadows.

And midst the chaff and dust and seeds a caterpillar crawls…

But butterflies fear to rise between the coils and clouds of smoke.

The breeze turns tempest and roars against the smoke;

Its source and purpose fixed.

The faithful sun sows golden seeds upon an anxious heart.

And color, that most wondrous fruit of light,

Does claim its place of sacred blessing.

And midst new air a butterfly lifts from the grinder’s floor,

If but to later pause within a somewhat brighter haze.

Chapter 1

THE CODE

B
rave Heinrich stood in the first line, nervous and unsure. He breathed quickly and gripped his weapon with fists squeezed white with fear. Behind him and to each side crowded the woollen horde of angry peasants. They chanted and cursed and raised their spears and axes in defiance of the ordered ranks of knights preparing to charge them once again. A long trumpet blasted and the earth began to shake.

Heinrich licked his dry lips and closed his eyes. A warm wind blew through his curly hair, and it felt good as it brushed across his stubbled face. Yearning only for peace, the simple man seemed always beset by strife and disharmony. He had spent his life offered to the bondage of things familiar, yet he was ever pursued by the disrupting purposes of something greater than himself. Persistent, patient, and persevering, Truth had labored to stir and prod, to urge and teach until, at last, the poor wretch might be freed to lift his eyes toward the light beyond his own dark world. Now he had been placed in the center of the greatest paradox of all his troubled years.

The mighty warhorses raged closer and closer like a furious tempest bearing down upon a helpless village. The thundering hooves filled Heinrich’s ears with dread, but the man held shoulder to shoulder with his stouthearted comrades. Steely-eyed and bearing all the confidence of their station, the knights crashed into the stubborn line of these lesser men.

With a shout and a lunge, Heinrich entered the whirlwind. All around him swirled the blurred images of horse and knight, the flash of swords and the splatters of blood. The stench of butchered men and slaughtered beasts filled his nose and choked his lungs; his ears were crowded with the thuds and clangs of hammers and steel, the cries of men and the whinnies of stallions lurching about the mêlée. Heinrich jabbed his glaive this way and that, impaling whom he could and dodging others. The man fought well.

But somewhere in the fury Heinrich’s world fell silent. He dropped to the ground gently and closed his eyes as if to sleep. It was then, it seemed, his spirit was lifted like a hawk on the wind far above the bloody plain. Higher and higher he climbed until he felt he was soaring and drifting in the sun’s kind currents. There he sailed and fluttered free, like a butterfly on a summer’s day. His weary heart was glad, and he sang with joy as the warmth of the merciful sun bathed his wounded soul. Calmed and steadied, he was touched by hope and returned to his struggle in the world of time.

In the tiny village of Weyer, a young peasant woman gave birth to a son on the nineteenth day of January, in the Year of Grace 1174. The event was not uncommon, of course, and only a few bothered to give it the slightest pause, but the story of a life had begun, and it, like that of every other life, would not be common at all.

Two days later the mother carried her child out of the cold shadows of Weyer’s dark stone church. The woman was pretty, though haggard, having the sunken eyes of one already wearied by life. As baby Heinrich turned his squinted face toward the warm rays of the winter’s sun, she quickly raised her thin hand to shield the infant’s eyes from the light.

“Too much sun ‘tis never good for young eyes,” grumbled the priest.

Berta nodded solemnly and drew her cloak around her newborn’s chin. Her husband, Kurt, leaned close to his
Frau
and wrapped a thick arm around her shoulders. They both thought this to be a good day, for a dip into icy water and the mumbled words of an old priest had pronounced their newborn’s soul safe from the fires of hell.

Now certain of their child’s eternal safety, Kurt and Berta could turn their hopes toward the lad’s survival of things temporal. They could only wonder what events might shape Heinrich in the time he would be granted. In the two days since Berta’s painful delivery both parents had surely grown close to the little one, and Kurt, of course, was quick to boast of his manhood in the siring of a son. Yet, they knew it would be wise to hold loosely to their affections, for bundlings were so very often laid to rest in sad, tiny graves. For this reason, the young mother, though content to lean against the solid frame of her broad-chested husband, now found deeper comfort in the Church’s sure embrace.

Berta turned and addressed the priest dutifully. “You’d be welcome to our home by sext for a bit of mush and mead, father.”

The old priest thought only of spending the remainder of this cold Sabbath day sleeping in front of his own good fire. There he’d be chewing salted-pork and white rolls, not grinding dark rye between his few remaining teeth or sucking mush from his fingers. “Nay, methinks m’old bones needs stay here on the hill. But blessings for the asking and God’s best to your family.”

Berta then spoke to her father-in-law who had just reached her side. “You’d still be coming for a bite?”

Jost, little Heinrich’s wiry, outspoken, and overbearing grandfather, spread his arms wide and draped them around the shoulders of Kurt and Berta. “Aye! But of course, m’lady! Y’ve beer or mead on hand … or a keg of cider perhaps?”

Berta’s face darkened slightly. She did not approve of excess on the Sabbath, particularly excess in drink, and most especially if Kurt’s family would be doing the drinking.

“Ja, ja,”
interrupted Kurt. “We’ve no cider, but we’ve plenty of beer and mead for drinking!” He laughed. The eldest of four, he had long since learned that it was helpful to laugh when caught between his father and another.

Jost’s leathered skin wrinkled with a smile. “Good, we’d be by at the bells … ach, but now I’ve needs tend to some business.”

Kurt watched his coarse, aging father bluster his way down the steps and then turned to his wife and gave her a wink. He knew that Berta was not pleased to host his family, but he was relieved she had risen to duty. He was equally proud that she had consented to allow his brothers and sister to stand as godparents. Kurt had learned to love his wife and was now happier than ever that his father had chosen her rather than that awful girl from the neighboring village of Oberbrechen. Berta was pleasing to his eye. He liked to tangle his fingers in her thick, cherry-red hair. He thought her eyes to be as blue as a sunny summer sky and her curves to be just ample enough to please. Her complexion was clear and she smelled better than most.

Berta pulled her hood close against her head and clutched it beneath her chin with one hand. “I do so try to give you a proper household, husband, one beyond gossip and pleasing to God. I needs keep us safe from evil.”

Kurt shrugged, a bit annoyed by his wife’s perpetual fears, then gently took her by the arm to descend the steps of the church hill. The pair followed the other peasants toward their simple hovels below until they all stopped to listen carefully to a faint but all too terrifying rumbling in the east. An eerie silence gripped the village and nothing could be heard other than the rush of wind—and the pounding of hooves! Then, as if commanded by a single voice, the peasants abruptly turned and surged back up the steps and toward the sanctuary of the church. Berta cried out and clutched her newborn tightly as her husband hurried them through a swarm of desperate neighbors.

Weyer’s church had withstood the onslaught of both nature and man for nearly four hundred years. Men-at-arms might torch the thatch of a peasant’s hovel and slay a child along a village path, but few would test grace by despoiling the house of God or spilling blood upon the glebe.

So, the poor
Volk
raced toward the arched doorway as sounds of heavy horses thundered ever closer. The trusted bell, ever faithful to the sacred hours of each day, now clanged a frantic warning to urge the villagers on. The peasants poured through the low archway like an anxious funnel of tangled wool as their priest spread his hands over them.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…”

Kurt pressed his way into the straw-floored nave, secretly wishing for more than the Spirit’s help, holy or not. “Come, Berta! Come by me!” He wished he might rather hear the sounds of their lord protector’s knights galloping to their rescue than to have his ears filled with pleas to heaven. “Berta, here, by me … come quick!”

Berta’s eyes were round with fright; her brows arched high. “Nay… husband, here!” she shouted. “We’ve needs to be by the holy altar … here … hurry!” Berta pushed through the crowd and crouched at the foot of Weyer’s bronze-plated altar, clutching the earth with one hand and holding baby Heinrich tightly with the other. The earthen floor at the front of the nave had been sprinkled with sand from Palestine; sand that long ago had been soaked by the Savior’s blood. It was a well-blessed place.

Kurt climbed through the mass of frightened serfs and wrapped his large body around his wife and child. The trio huddled together until the oak doors of the church were slammed shut and locked in place by a huge wooden crossbeam. The priest’s tremulous voice seemed suddenly invigorated by the crisis, and its confident timbre quickly calmed the jittery throng. The thick walls of the damp church muffled the sound of the approaching horsemen, but watchmen at the small windows soon gave news of their arrival.

A column of armored knights had, indeed, entered the village byway of the road from Münster in the east and now paused at the base of the church hill. They milled about on steaming horses pawing impatiently at the frozen earth. Though dressed in chain mail and heavily armed, none seemed purposed toward pillage or rape. One watchman whispered that they seemed lost on their way to some other place. The priest was unsure; it was uncommon for knights to be about their business in January. The harvest crops were not stored in the villages except for what the peasants’ small barns might hold, and he was not aware of present threats against the holdings of either the village’s lord, the abbot, or his hired protector and neighbor, Lord Hugo.

The priest opened the door slowly and stepped to the edge of the churchyard wall to steal a peek. He stuck his pointy nose into the cold air and studied the men carefully. “Hmm. No torches, no drawn swords, no forays into the village. Would seem to be a pitiful lot of lost fools.” He called upon his instincts and stepped cautiously through the gate to descend the hill. When he reached the bottom he ambled to the nearest horseman and bowed. “Greetings! How may I serve you?”

A red-faced knight leaned toward the priest and scowled. His breath steamed into the cold air and he hissed impatiently through his frosted beard. “Ja, you can serve us! We’ve been ordered to the keep at Betzdorf and methinks m’sergeant’s turned us wrong!”

The priest had no knowledge of Betzdorf and now suddenly faced a dilemma. He could plainly see that the men were agitated and he knew they could easily unleash their frustrations on his flock. The anxious priest feared to expose his ignorance, but also feared to point the soldiers in the wrong direction. Confused and sweating, he whispered a desperate prayer and begged for a plain sign from heaven. At that moment a black bird flew along the roadway in the direction of the village of Selters, to the south. “Ah, yes, praise the Virgin,” he muttered. He turned to the knight. “Good soldier. Betzdorf be south by some distance. Y’needs ride hard to this way,” he pointed to his right, “first westward through Oberbrechen, then south at the fork to Selters and beyond. Methinks it to be a hard ride … but my prayers shall go with you.”

The knight grumbled and swore an oath at his sergeant. His horse snorted clouds of white vapor over the priest. Spinning his mount, he hesitated for just a moment—a long moment for the anxious cleric—then led his soldiers quickly away.