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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Beloved Pilgrim
© 2014 Christopher Hawthorne Moss.
Cover Art
© 2014 Anne Cain.
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Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or [email protected].
ISBN: 978-1-62798-538-3
Library ISBN: 978-1-62798-540-6
Digital ISBN: 978-1-62798-539-0
Printed in the United States of America
Second Edition
January 2014
First edition by Nan Hawthorne published by Shieldwall Books, February 2011.
Library Edition
April 2014
For the love of my life, Jim, who embraced the Elias in me.
Author’s Note
THIS NOVEL has a special place in both my heart and career. When I first wrote it, I identified entirely as a female. That is in spite of decades of never feeling the woman down deep inside. My compass pointed to Robin Hood, loving tales of noble knights on quest, identifying with my own male characters in stories, and playing men during make-believe. I knew I did not like the female characters in stories, but I chalked it up to the sexism of literary culture. I vowed that I would write a novel with a female character I could actually relate to.
I did. I wrote Elisabeth von Winterkirche, a woman who wanted to have the life of a knight, perforce male. That was the first edition of this novel.
Then I went through the period many people of both sexes go through called gender dysphoria, where the gender one has always believed they were stops fitting what one’s experience tells one. For many people this happens as early as four or five years old. Mine came to a crisis when I was just shy of sixty. Certain experiences made me see the truth about myself, that whatever my body looks like my soul, heart, and mind are male. That experience was, more than anything else, realizing that the sort of woman I can relate to is a woman who comes to recognize that she is a man!
Rewriting this novel, taking out terms like “masquerade” or “looking like a man” was perhaps the last significant step in my realizing I am transmasculine. I live as a man now. I have a man’s name, man’s clothing, and someday soon will have a beard and a flat chest. And a couple of years since my growing suspicion began, I know I was right all along. I was definitely not a girl.
Now in the novel you will find “Elisabeth” baffled as to how it can be that she has a female body but knows herself as a man. In that era being transgender was not entirely unknown. In Roman times a sect of male priests chose to live as women. Needless to say the Christian Church considered a person wearing the garb of the opposite gender an abomination. In fact, while the Church saw homosexuality as something for it to deal with, to pray and reform the offender, someone wearing gender-inappropriate clothing was likely to be put to death. Further, while a man could become a eunuch or castrato, there would be no way for a woman to alter her physique surgically to have male anatomy.
Today we not only have surgery to reverse Gender Identity Disorder, we are learning more about how it comes about that a little girl is really a little boy. In short, it has to do with which hormones are in the unborn child at which stage in development. One set of hormones might make one’s genitalia female, but a different set make the brain male. More important, however, is that many brave people throughout time have divined their own truth without need of an authority and trust that they know what is right for them.
It was my job as the author of this book to take a character from the early Middle Ages and grasp what would be real for him or her, what he or she would experience, and how he or she would act faced with a challenge to identity. I also wanted to mirror my own experience of transition. Not being at all athletic, I did not have a chance to survive as a “tomboy.” In fact, a real tomboy once asked me how I could lay claim to that term. I thought about it and explained, “I’m not a tomboy. I’m a Thomas Gentleman.”
I look forward to your comments on Beloved Pilgrim. I hope you will feel free to contact me at [email protected]. I am on Facebook and occasionally on Twitter. There is nothing more affirming to a novelist than to hear readers talk about his or her books. I’m a “his” and the same goes for me.
A short historical note: the crusade of 1101, often considered an extension of the First Crusade, happened pretty much as I describe. That is, as far as anyone can tell, since the three accepted accounts of the events were written by three people who did not accompany the crusades, one of whom retold a year-old story told to him by men who returned. A fact about the crusades one has to address is that the Church permitted only versions it approved. One fact they would not share is that women did indeed participate in the crusades, as confirmed by Muslim sources that were famously more accurate. Whatever the truth of the crusade of 1101, it changed the path of European economics irrevocably. After 1101 no crusaders could travel from Byzantium to the Holy Land by land. Travel had to be by sea. As a direct consequence, the great cities of Italy—Venice, Milan and so forth—became vastly wealthy and powerful as the departure ports for people and supplies.
Christopher Hawthorne Moss
Seattle, Washington
Chapter One
God Wills It
WITH A loud crack, the sword came down on a helm already knocked askew by an earlier blow. The helm flew off and the wearer staggered and nearly lost his feet.
“Ho, valiantly done!” fifteen-year-old Elisabeth von Winterkirche called from her perch on the wooden fence.
Her twin brother Elias made a mock bow. “I thank you, my lady.”
“You always take his side,” said the other boy, Albrecht, who like Elias was squire to Sigismund von Winterkirche, the twins’ father.
“He’s a better fighter than you are,” she stated emphatically.
“And better looking too,” Elias quipped. He preened, stroking the barest shadow of beard growing on his chin.
“I will concede that point,” the shorter, darker boy said. Elias looked at him with that funny, knowing smile that irritated his sister so. It just did not seem to fit.
Albrecht leaned to pick up his helm and put it back on his head. “If this damned thing had straps, it wouldn’t come off so easily.”
Elias let out a bark of derisive laughter. “Oh, is that why I keep knocking it off? It’s not my mighty and well-delivered blows. It’s the lack of straps.” He lifted his chin and waved his fingers at his own throat. “Look, no straps here either. But m
y helm is sitting securely on my head.”
Albrecht muttered something that made Elisabeth burst out laughing.
“What did he say?” her brother demanded.
“He said your swelled head fills it so much it is stuck,” she explained.
Elias took a stance with his wooden sword tilted up from his right side. “Have at me, varlet. I shall not brook such ignoble insults!”
The two hefted their small shields and began to move in a counterclockwise circle, each looking for openings in the other boy’s defenses. Elisabeth, unlike most girls, did not watch the practice fighting for her own entertainment. She watched each move while imagining herself in combat, detecting as best she could what each opponent was trying to do, what might work better, and what she would try given the chance. Those chances did come, for the twins had been each other’s only companion through their father’s absences and mother’s frequent illnesses. Only when Albrecht came to serve at Winterkirche did Elias have anyone else to practice fighting with him. Elisabeth itched to get in on this fight but contented herself for now just critiquing the boys’ moves.
Each had his practice sword up and held parallel to the upper edge of his shield. She had long known a fighter had to keep his sword up above the level of his opponent’s shield if he had any hope of landing a blow to the body. Striking the heavy wooden shield was not without its utility, if one could deliver a hard enough blow to knock the shield askew. Elias and Albrecht knew each other’s skills well enough not to waste effort on this move. They circled each other looking for a head shot.
Elias, the taller, repeatedly brought his sword swinging around to strike Albrecht’s shoulder or head, but Albrecht managed over and over to raise his shield enough to block the blow or to meet sword with sword, resulting in the sharp thwack of wooden blades. Elias constantly pressed forward, making Albrecht retreat. Elisabeth pressed her lips tightly together with impatience. Elias’s greatest flaw was that he was all forward motion, aggression, and not enough defense. If only Albrecht would use that against him. Elias got in some bruising blows on the shorter boy’s right arm. Elisabeth mentally registered the point, but the fighters did not pause.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she finally cried, jumping down from the fence. “This is getting tedious. Let me fight him.”
The boys stopped and stared at her. “Fight whom?” her brother asked.
“You, Elias. Albrecht just lets you chase him around the yard. Give me your weapon.”
Albrecht looked at Elias.
“Go ahead. She won’t break anything,” Elias said, rolling his eyes.
Elisabeth let Albrecht slip the shield onto her right arm, his helm on her head, and finally hand her the wooden sword.
The siblings took their fighting stances. Elisabeth let Elias come forward, backing up as he fully expected she would. When he seemed to put all his force into the motion, she stopped retreating and came at him, raining blows everyplace she could. He was startled at first but regained his stability, then hauled off and gave her a bruising whack on the hip. She dropped to her knees but did not concede.
Elias grinned at her. He widened his stance and took a step forward. She lifted her sword as if to swing around and catch him right of his sword, where one elbow had appeared. He laughed and moved so his shield was up and between them. She let her sword go back around and come up from below. His unprotected groin received all the might she could muster.
He staggered back, his mouth wide open but no sound issuing forth. Collapsing to his knees, he dropped his sword and shield. He put his leather-gauntleted hands to his groin and toppled over sideways.
Elisabeth lifted her arms and crowed with triumph. She danced around in place, chanting, “Yes, yes, yes!” When she looked around again, she saw Albrecht kneeling by her brother, his arms out at his sides, at a loss for how to help him.
“He’ll live to suffer worse blows than that” came a deep male voice from behind her. She turned to look at Elias’s and Albrecht’s sword master, Dagobert. “Just let him lie there a bit and give him small sips of this.” He handed a waterskin to Albrecht, then turned to Elisabeth. “Madam, you take advantage of how much he underestimates you. If you were not his sister, he would decimate you.”
She scowled at him.
“And you put me in a difficult position. Your mother has begged me to discourage your interest in fighting.” He looked to where Albrecht was helping Elias sit up. “Speaking of your mother, she wants you both. She has had a messenger.”
The twins found Adalberta in her solar. She sat in a window embrasure with her embroidery in her lap, her eyes closed and her head back against the frame of the window. She looked as drained as ever. For all her protests that she was feeling stronger, neither of her children could ever see evidence of it. When she heard them come in, she opened her eyes, straightened, and tried to make it look like she had been busily stitching. As little interest as Elisabeth had in such things, she could see there had been no progress on the altar cloth in at least two days.
“My darlings, I have the happiest of news! I have had word from your father. The Lombards have let the imperial party cross their land. The four-year exile is over!”
The joyful look on their mother’s face was not feigned. The two young people hurried forward to kneel at her feet. “Oh, Mother, at long last!”
“I know it has been very hard on you, my dears, to be without your father. And Elias, I know you have taken it hard not to have the chance to leave home to squire in another household. I will never stop being grateful that you agreed to stay here with me, especially at first when I was so ill.”
The twins managed to hide the shared knowledge that their mother had never in their memory been anything but ill. “Is Father coming home soon?” Elias asked.
“He must go with the emperor’s army to Cologne; then he and his household knights and men will come south to us. In a few days, maybe more. But after all this time, I think we can wait patiently.”
Elisabeth pressed one of her mother’s hands against her cheek. “Oh no, we can’t.” She laughed.
ELISABETH CURSED like one of the grooms as she tugged the hem of her skirt from the bramble where it was caught. “Damn, if I could just wear britches like Elias and Albrecht, I shouldn’t have to deal with skirts!”
It was her constant refrain of late: “I wish I was a boy.” Boys could learn to use weapons, boys could climb trees, boys could go off for hours and wander in the countryside, and boys did not have to sit still in Mother’s solar and learn excruciatingly dull needlework.
She knew Elias and Albrecht were not far. They had given her the slip earlier that afternoon and gone off with their bows to their favorite patch of woods. Elisabeth was becoming weary of this phase in Elias’s life. For months she had found her brother spending more and more time with his friend and leaving her behind. Her mother told her it was natural, and that soon she would be more interested in ladies’ concerns, as her brother was in men’s. “Balls,” she muttered under her breath, delighted at her own audacity.
Serve him right if he misses Father’s homecoming. He knew Father’s party was expected today. Where is he? she wondered as she pushed her way through the scrub.
As she rounded the edge of a small coppice of trees, she thought she saw movement. There they are! She slowed her progress, wanting to surprise her brother and his friend.
She heard a yelp, which meant that whomever was chasing had caught the other. Probably it was Elias, the taller and older, by a year, of Father’s two squires. She stepped forward to make herself known and froze.
It was indeed Elias who had caught his friend. He had Albrecht, with his tangle of brown curls, pressed up against the trunk of a tree, his own hands on either side of Albrecht’s shoulders, trapping him. It was what Elias was doing that rooted Elisabeth to the spot. He leaned slowly forward, bringing his face down to the smiling Albrecht’s, and he kissed him. Kissed him! He kissed him on the mouth, and Albrecht responded.
He reached up his own arms, put them around Elias’s body, and they melted together in an embrace that communicated itself somehow right to Elisabeth’s belly.
Taking one step backward at a time, Elisabeth put the coppice between herself and the boys. Conflicting impulses assailed her. She wanted to turn and run all the way back to the manor. She wanted to burst in on them and demand an explanation. She followed another impulse instead, walking quietly to a spot by the brook, where she sat on her favorite boulder. Drawing up her knees, she wrapped her arms around her legs and dropped her chin to rest on them.
What were Elias and Albrecht doing?
She knew perfectly well what. She just had not realized boys would do that with each other.
She and Elias had been inseparable until three years ago, when Albrecht von Langenzenn had come to Winterkirche from his own family’s manor to become a knight-in-training as Sigismund of Winterkirche’s squire. It was then, Elisabeth now realized, that the bond between her and Elias had loosened. Though the three children were friends, she became aware of a special new bond between the boys. She’d complained to her mother about it. Adalberta had stroked her soft brown hair and assured her that Elias was of an age where he needed companions of his own sex. A pouting Elisabeth had nevertheless said nothing to her brother about feeling abandoned.
Sitting on the rock, Elisabeth stared unseeing at the brook as it flowed, tumbling over fallen branches and the stones of its streambed. Should she tell Mother about what she saw? Her innate loyalty to her twin above all others caused her to say “No!” aloud to the brook, the trees, and the birds around her. But wasn’t it a sin? Were you not supposed to get married before you kissed anyone like that, and if so, how could two boys get married? She had never heard of such a thing. Should she say something to Elias himself? He would explain it to her. He was so kind and so wise. He would make it all right.
A shrill blast of a horn made Elisabeth look up, and she turned her head toward the manor. Father! It was Father, back from his journey to see Emperor Henry. She leaped to her feet and ran nearly to where she had spied on the two squires. Though she could not see the boys, she could hear giggling and shouted, “Elias! Father is home!”
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