Sylvia (2 page)
The two old soldiers watched as panting husbands, carrying garments of every description, some in possession of whips and stout sticks, began to arrive. Gesticulating wildly the husbands shouted out the names of their wives, while for the benefit of each other, they cursed the gullibility and hysteria of the weaker sex. But their presence did not diminish the spiritual exhilaration. Meek and untroublesome women, caught up in this moment of ecstasy, brushed their husbands aside as if they were beggar children tugging at their skirts.
Soon the homeless, mostly street urchins and cretinous youth, rapscallions all, sleeping under dirty rags in the dark, stinking narrow alleys that surrounded the church, wakened to the strange, high-pitched chant and descended upon the naked women like a pack of hungry wolves. Whooping and caterwauling they barged and darted among the frenzied gathering, groping unfamiliar parts, grinning lewdly for the joy of pawing and fondling female flesh while stealing bangles and beads from pliant wrists and necks. Husbands ceased from beating wives and fell instead upon the invaders from the alleyways. This seemed only to increase the fun for the errant halfwits and snot-nosed urchins who easily dodged their blows and were seen to lead the older men a merry dance. It was not long before their attackers grew short of breath and stood panting, stooped, with their hands upon their knees, whereupon the garments they clutched were ripped from their grasp as they now became the object of attack and robbery.
Yet the women remained oblivious to the mayhem surrounding them. No amount of promiscuous patting or licentious groping was to any avail; ignoring the errant hands, the thieving fingers, and the cajoling, cursing, bloody blows and cries from their anxious and angry menfolk, they chanted on and on, âOur children in Jerusalem!'
I AM SYLVIA HONEYEATER. I came originally from Uedem, a village some distance from Cologne. This is the story of my life. I will relate it as honestly as I may, for they say confession is good for the soul and my soul, poor dead thing, is much in need of some good. If I should attempt to justify my deeds with the adage that the alley cat cannot choose the bowl from which it laps, you must accept that the truth is often painful.
To begin, I think myself born in 1196, whether at the beginning or the end I cannot say. It was an unpropitious year of great starvation when sickness and blight visited the land and half the village perished from the terrible epidemic that scourged Germany and all the lands surrounding. For the four years before, it had rained and flooded so much that the crops could not be harvested until late August when the seed had mostly rotted. Many folk, in an attempt to stay alive, ate the grass along the streams and the rotting flesh of dead animals, and if there were woods nearby they gathered acorns to grind into bread. It was also the year of recruitment for the German Crusade that failed in its attempt to get to Jerusalem.
I was the seed my father deposited in my poor mother's womb prior to his departure as a foot soldier and crusader for the Holy Land. He became a crusader not from any sense of piety, but to escape the sickness and in return for the promise by his Holiness the Pope that if he served in the attempt to regain the Holy Sepulchre from the vile hands of the infidels he would be forgiven his sins. It was a deal in which the Almighty most definitely got the worst of the bargain. My father was a drunk, a huge, bellicose brute, by trade a carpenter but one seldom seen to do an honest day's work. But then again, he was not alone. In order to escape from justice, many a layabout, drunkard and thief wore the Cross emblazoned upon his soldier's tunic. While playing the pious pilgrim my father was interested only in profit, in looting, the maddening frenzy of killing for Christ, rapine or some other nefarious mischief, with the forgiveness of his sins past being the glorious prize to be awarded at the conclusion of his pilgrimage.
True to my nation I was blonde and blue-eyed and later, as I grew into a woman and lost the starved look that comes with poverty, I was known to be of comely appearance and, more importantly, I knew from their constant flattery and attentions that men found me desirable. For all the advantage this was to give me I would have been better served with squint eyes and a harelip for I always find myself attracted to a rogue's bed. They say the nature of all humans is born within them, that what we are we cannot change. I am cursed as an optimist and a dreamer, a dangerous combination, for I seldom see the traps that men set for me and see only the excitement in the brute and the tedium in the good man.
If, as they say, I am as I was born, my social nature immutable, then my attraction to bastards is not something I may change, although my father, the first of many in my life, was one of the few not chosen by myself and also the first to cause me to commit the sin of hatred. As a child I grew to regard him with a great malevolence and in my thoughts he remains so to this day. May he rot in hell!
Let me begin with him then. A year after his departure my father returned from the siege of Toron in Galilee, which the crusader army abandoned in panic at the first news that the Muslim army of al-Aziz approached from Egypt. Despite this fiasco the Pope's promise of redemption carried a âno cowards' clause and my father returned cleansed of all his past sins. With a clean slate and a missing right leg he claimed to have lost in the siege while demonstrating great valour, he took up the life of a wastrel. A carved wooden peg with a brass tip replaced his former leg and was further fitted with an embossed camel leather cup and straps decorated with small metal studs that bound it to a purple stump of scar tissue. Henceforth he was known as Brass Leg Peter the Forgiven Coward, a name he never saw for the cruel joke it was intended to be. He argued, too vehemently for credence, that due to his war wound and the courage he claimed had earned it, he was the exception, one of the few German crusaders to be forgiven of cowardice. I would later learn that he had lost his leg acting in a foolhardy manner while drunk when working on the construction of a siege engine.
Back home with the seasons back to normal he worked sufficiently at his carpenter's trade only so that he might drink and fornicate and be seen a generous fellow among the village men. He gave my mother none of his earnings but expected food on the table, a fire in the hearth and to receive all the attendant duties of an obedient and submissive wife. He was also a consummate liar and his outrageous tales of derring-do, if not for one minute true, were well told and worth the listening for the laughter and entertainment they brought. Is it not so that a coward's stories of heroism are always more valiant than those modestly related by a true hero?
Whereas the ale contained in my father's
krug
foamed with merriment among his drunken fellow villagers, the very same substance turned to bile in his stomach by the time he arrived home from the inn. My mother and I would hear him cursing and shouting abuse, sometimes crying out in pain as his peg leg jarred against a rut or entered into a hole in the uneven surface of the dark road. In the summer we would escape to the woods where we would pass the time singing.
We would return when the moon was halfway high in the summer sky, knowing that he would have collapsed into a drunken stupor, and we always drew comfort from the sound of snoring as we approached from the pigsty beside the cottage. But in the bitter winter snow there was no place to hide lest we freeze to death. While I cowered under the bed, my mother accepted an inevitable beating, dodging most of the clumsy blows my father, far from nimble on a wooden leg, aimed at her.
I was eight years old or thereabouts, in the winter of 1204, when at the age of twenty-eight my mother died of pleurisy. She was a woman of great character and resilience who took much pride in the fact that she came from free peasant stock and was not subject to tenure to the count who, together with the monastery, owned most of the land hereabouts. She was an only child and her parents, mindful of their precious daughter, had unknowingly caused her to be betrothed to a young carpenter, Peter of Pulheim, who was said to have excellent prospects. Thinking that his trade and diligence would allow their only child to prosper in her married life they were beguiled by his greedy parents and her father forewent the
munt
, the compensation due to him from the groom's parents, thinking that to have his daughter well matched and safe was sufficient reward. It was soon apparent that my father was indolent, a ne'er-do-well and a drunkard who spent his days fighting and carousing and who used what little money he earned to support a life of profligacy.
Those were, as they still are, hard times, but my mother was a woman proficient in most things concerning the peasant way of life. With the death of both her mother and father scarce three years after her marriage she inherited a small cottage and half an acre of land. The land she worked assiduously, growing corn and cabbages, onions and turnips for sale at the village market and a few vegetables for our own use. She also kept six hens and a rooster and three pigs of a good breed, a boar and two sows that grew fat on the spoilt cabbage leaves and turnip tops.
The black boar was a splendid animal and my mother took great pride in him as his seed was plentiful; both sows were good mothers and every teat was occupied with robust piglets that she would fatten and sell for a good price. She would always donate one piglet to the Church, which put her greatly into favour with the priest, Father Pietrus. If all she touched in husbandry was blessed with fecundity this was not true of herself, and like her own mother she too seemed barren in the first years of her marriage. This gave my father the right in the eyes of the Church to divorce her. But if he was a wastrel he was by no means stupid. She gave him a fire in the hearth, his food and a warm bed and even money for drink, and kept her thoughts to herself while demanding nothing in return. She was barren and therefore in the eyes of men, the law and the Church she was useless, an empty vessel. The shame of being known as a âcast off' was a greater humiliation than the beatings and the scorn she received from him. But then, on the eve of my father's departure for Jerusalem came a late sowing of his seed that received God's blessing and I was born while he was away in the Holy Land.
As my father's drinking and bellicose behaviour grew he added infidelity to his list of public misdemeanours, taking up with wanton women and whores. He showed no improvement upon his return and would curse my mother for her girl child and her inability to give him a son and heir. Although she was often beaten, the shame his womanising brought her in the eyes of other married women was by far the worse punishment and increasingly she sought the solace of the Church. She possessed a natural and pleasant voice and took some pride in being allowed to sing a part of the Gregorian chant on her own when the convent choir was invited to perform before visiting ecclesiastics, a privilege usually only accorded a nun who possessed a sweet voice.
Eventually my father's dissolute life was beginning to attract the attention of the burgomaster. I well recall my mother's shame and relief when he would spend the night in the lockup. We would have the bed to ourselves and I loved these times when, snuggled into her arms, she would tell me stories and teach me the words and tunes of the many folksongs she knew.
But my mother was more, much more to me than these lovely nights spent together in bed. She would keep me constantly at her side while she worked, teaching me the ways of the seasons, of seeds, caring and harvesting of plants and the duties of animal husbandry. I'd accompany her to the markets where I soon learned how to sell and how to bargain. We would spend hours together in the nearby woods where we would take her precious pigs to forage, until I knew all the wild herbs to be gathered for seasoning, the mushrooms that were good to eat and those to be left well alone. In the high summer we'd pick blackberries and wild strawberries and we'd laugh and sing until we'd quite forgotten the burdensome male in our lives.
She would often grow serious in the middle of laughter. It was as if she had suddenly experienced a strange prescience. Then she would bid me come to her and clutch me, as though desperate, to her bosom. âMy precious, I have long since forgiven every blow and bruise I have received from the drunken brute simply because his nascent seed finally brought my womb to life and God saw fit to give you to me.' Then kissing my golden curls she would add as if she knew that she would not be at my side much longer, âRemember, Sylvia, you were late in coming into my life and so you have all the wisdom I have gained as I grew older. Whatever I know, you will know more abundantly and already your voice is sweeter and truer than my own. You are blessed with intelligence, a sweet nature and a lively character that will serve you well in life if you do not allow yourself to become too impetuous of spirit or let vanity at your coming beauty drain the charity from your soul. Hold your head high, my lovely child, let no one bring you down. A strong woman must be like the willow tree â while she bends to the wild and wicked winds of life she will endure.'
At the time I was too young to fully understand her words, nor did I think of myself as either pretty or tempestuous, though in the latter characteristic she has been proved to be right. In my younger years God blessed me with a certain beauty that proved as troublesome as it was an advantage. I loved and revered my mother with all my heart and while every child must try to honour and respect their father, he took such scant notice of me that I scarcely knew him when he was sober and feared and avoided him when he was drunk. Should he as much as touch me when he was in a drunken state my mother, who was otherwise compliant to all his wishes, would fly at him with a knife in her hand, eyes blazing. âTouch my child, you bastard, and I will wait until you sleep and kill you!' she'd snarl.
