Pilgrims of Promise (51 page)

The priest smiled. “
Ja!
‘Tis so!”

“No!” roared a merchant. The man stood and rested his hands in the folds of his robe. He looked down his long nose at the faces now turned toward him. “No, I say.” He looked squarely at Pieter. “You are a churchman, and no force on earth would more severely oppose the scholars than your Holy Church.” Murmurs of assent rippled around the table. The man went on. “My nephew is a student at university. He will be a doctor of philosophy in time. On Easter past, he shared with us the marvels of the ancients. The crusaders have brought back the works of Aristotle and Ptolemy, Socrates and Plato. In their writings we are discovering another way of thinking. Now, he says, the students are beginning to reject the dictates of others, even their professors. They are beginning to reason with their
own
minds, and in time, he says, that will change everything.

“When a man can think on his own, he becomes a new man indeed. He becomes a free agent, unwilling to lose himself in some vague order of others. No, he will stand apart. This, sirs, is what is happening, and I for one welcome it! We will no longer be mindless, cowering sheep led to slaughter by the Church! No, sirs. We are freemen, free to think, free to serve that which is reasonable, and free to reject that which is not!”

The diners rose, applauding. Godfrey, however, was anxious. “My dear guests,” he said slowly, “have a care. The world is what it is. The Holy Church will not be cast aside so easily. It will surely answer, and it shall do so with sincere zeal.”

Frustrated, Pieter interrupted. “You need not cast away faith to find your freedom!” His voice was nearly desperate. “No, sirs, no! You boast of your fine minds, yet you do not understand. Faith is the way of freedom.”

“The Church is a place of bondage!” shouted one. Others agreed loudly.

“Listen!” cried Pieter. “I did not say that Rome is the way to freedom. I said that faith is the way. If not checked, your scholars will simply lead us into a new tyranny. Yes, yes, use your minds freely, but do not be so foolish as to deny the mysteries—for that is where truth also abides.”

“And who should ‘check’ the scholars, old man? You and your—” A loud, rapid knocking at the front door interrupted the man’s speech. Godfrey rose and asked all for silence. He ordered an usher to the door. The man returned, ashen faced. He whispered into Godfrey’s ear. The merchant nodded and licked his lips nervously, then summoned another servant to his side. The three huddled anxiously as Wil and his fellows began to shift in their seats.

Godfrey summoned Alwin. Drawing him close, he said, “Two Templars are at my door with some men-at-arms. My servant says they demand to speak with me.”

“About what?” blurted Alwin.

“They did not say, but you must leave.” Godfrey’s face was tight and pale. “Please, my friend. Take your companions and follow my servant to the rear. Disappear into the town. They’ll surely search my home and the stable, and that should take some time.”

Alwin squeezed the man’s hand and motioned to Wil. No words were needed. The company rose quickly and hurried behind the servant toward the rear of the house as Godfrey offered an explanation to his perplexed guests. “Rest easy, all of you. We’ve some soldiers at the door who are searching for these others.”

Godfrey stiffened and spoke sternly. “Now listen. We here are all men of business. We need one another. I ask you to trust me.” He looked at the table’s vacated places and knew he could deny little. Fists were now pounding on his door. “Please, I will tell them our guests left an hour ago. I need you to keep silent on this.”

The door burst open, and six knights charged into the house, shouting. Godfrey bowed as his guests stood. “Welcome. How can we serve you?”

A Templar spat. He looked at the empty places. “Where are they?” he roared. “We’re told of a one-eyed man and an old priest with a knight and a company of youths. A peddler claims he saw them here!”

Godfrey nodded. “Indeed, sir. Indeed they were. I thought them to be pilgrims in need.”

The knight kicked at a hound. “Where are they?” he growled.

“Ah, good sir. They left us, oh, perhaps an hour ago or more.”

Another soldier looked at the perspiring guests suspiciously. He looked at the plates, still partly filled with food. “Why would they leave their food behind?”

Godfrey faltered. The Templar stuck his finger in a sausage. “Still warm!” he cried. “Search the house!”

Wil, Heinrich, Alwin, and the others ran desperately across the merchant’s rear courtyard and into his small stable. There they feverishly gathered their provisions and dragged Paulus into the alleyway. Behind them they could hear shouts and breaking glass. “Hurry!” cried Wil. “Hurry!”

The desperate company followed the merchant’s servant down the winding descent of the town’s streets until he pointed them to Marburg’s eastern wall. “There, through that gate. Godspeed!” he cried.

The pilgrims flew from the town and dashed across an open field toward the cover of a wooded slope. Maria dragged Paulus, and Wil and Tomas carried Pieter until they all crashed headlong into a thicket. Tripping and collapsing into their cover, the company abruptly spun about to see if they were being followed.

“Can you see?” asked Frieda. “Wil, can you see?”

Wil studied every horse, rider, cart, and peasant leaving the town gate. He turned his face to the roadway, to the riverbanks, and he stared at the many folks feasting outside the walls. “No. I don’t see them.”

Heinrich counted everyone, then checked their provisions. “We should have left Paulus behind. It was foolish.”

“No!” snapped Maria. She wrapped her arm around the donkey’s long face. “No. They might have killed him. And… and Pieter needs him.”

Heinrich nodded. “Well, ‘tis a miracle we were not seen running with him. If they had been on the walls, they would have seen us for sure.”

“Godfrey must have delayed them,” said Alwin. “He’s like a fox when he needs to be.”

Frieda thought she heard the cry of gulls. She looked up. “Wil, we must keep moving.”

The company stumbled northwestward all that day. With anxious eyes cast behind them, they pressed deep into the twilight darkness. No longer following the Lahn, they traveled on the starlit highway leading to Kassei. The next day they moved off the roadway and paralleled it at a safe distance, keeping a sharp eye on those passing by. The road was crowded with summer traffic—peddlers, pilgrims, clerics, caravans, and men-at-arms—but they did not see the white robes of Templars all that day or the next.

They continued their journey through a widening landscape decorated with yellow and purple wildflowers sprinkled generously in the clearings between stands of beech and spruce. It was here that Maria pranced happily once more. She gathered enough summer blooms to decorate the hair of the three women and then presented a ringlet of vines for Pieter’s white head.

The column crossed the Eder River at Fritzlar and then began a rolling march through a knotty landscape that delivered the travelers to the outskirts of Kassei.

“They have not trailed us, Alwin,” offered Heinrich. “We’ve seen nothing of them for almost a week. They would have no way of knowing which way we went from Marburg. “

The knight knew the discipline of the Templar Order, and he was still anxious. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I just don’t know.”

Wil ordered the night’s camp be set, and soon the fugitives were resting uncomfortably around a small fire. “My beloved,” Pieter began slowly. He coughed weakly. “I know a cloister near these parts. I think you ought to leave me there. I am now a danger to you all. I slow you. My time is nearly come.”

Maria began to sob softly. She snuggled against the bony man’s frame like a kitten nestling into a safe place.

“No,” stated Wil flatly. “Pieter, we are safe enough here. They are not following us any longer. We need you, Pieter. We still need you.”

Pieter took a shallow breath. He did not have the energy to argue. The last five days had been grueling, and he wanted nothing other than to sleep. He nodded and closed his eyes. Soon, midst the gentle chatter of the others, he fell to sleep. Lying in the firelight with a slight smile on his face, the old man was quickly carried to pleasant places on the wings of dreams.

Morning broke with a fresh August breeze. It was quickly decided that the group would not enter Kassei but would spend the day quietly at rest. The women were to tend to Pieter and to put their provisions in some order, while the men and boys would scout the highway. Alwin believed that the Templars were either close behind—in which case they might be seen entering Kassel’s gates that very day, or they were ahead—in which case it would be good to let them go farther. “But if they’ve gone ahead,” the knight said, “well need to keep a sharp eye for their return. They are not easily fooled.”

“As I’ve said, they have no idea where we went from Marburg!” protested Heinrich. “We could have run in any direction. Even Godfrey does not know our plan.”

Alwin shrugged. “I feel better about it now than a few days ago, but I know them. They’ve the instincts of master huntsmen.”

Wil agreed. “Stedingerland will wait for us. Each league makes us safer, but we are not safe. I think we are right to do this slowly.”

The day quickly passed without any sight of the dreaded Templars, and night fell lightly on a company now beginning to relax. Conversations became lighthearted, even jovial. Pieter had slept throughout the day and was now surprisingly refreshed. He ate a small supper and began to recount tales of his youth.

Wilda and Alwin walked slowly away from the camp toward a nearby clearing where they stared dreamily into the starry canopy above. They spoke of many things and as their hands brushed, the touch felt warm to them both. Alwin looked into Wilda’s face uneasily. “Wilda, is it true that you are Heinrich’s cousin?”

“Did he tell you that?”

Alwin nodded.

“It is so. My motherwas his aunt, his father’s sister.”

“And who was your father?”

“I do not know. My mother was raped by a pack of wicked shepherds.”

“Gunnars,” said Alwin sadly. “They were my kin.”

Wilda’s face fell, and she did not answer at first. She shifted subtly away from the man. “I… I thought that was a rumor.”

Alwin shook his head. “No, dear Wilda. It is true. Heinrich and I have spoken of the feud of our fathers. It was some of my kin who raped your mother … and someone of Heinrich’s who killed my father.”

Wilda wrung her hands. “It may be that we have the same father then!”

Alwin’s throat swelled. He had grown to love this woman, but the knowledge of their pasts could ruin it all. “Nay, ‘tis not so. Neither my father nor his brothers were involved in the attack. Yet surely our house has paid for its many sins against your kin.”

Wilda turned her back on the handsome knight and walked a few paces away. She had begun to love this man. “I know not what to say. ‘Tis a horrible thing that was done to my mother—it ruined her life … and mine.”

Unable to restrain his heart any longer, Alwin strode toward the woman and turned her face to his. Holding her shoulders firmly, he asked, “Can you find it within to forget the sorrow? You must, if you can … for I love you, Wilda.”

Wilda buried her face in the man’s heaving chest. Weeping, she could not answer.

The next day delivered the quiet company past numbers of mills sprinkled along the woody banks of the Fulda River. The meadows had widened, but the slopes on either side of the river rose steeply. The column kept to the forests as much as possible, making the walking rather difficult for that day and the next. Finally, they came within view of the newly built gatehouse of the walled town of Münden, and they paused to decide whether they should venture within or not.