Beloved Pilgrim

by Christopher Hawthorne Moss

  He laughed at her exasperated look.

  She had taken leave of her brother when the squire returned with a covered tray. “I will let you talk.” She startled Albrecht by going up to him and leaning to plant a kiss on his cheek.

  The next time she saw him, he looked at her oddly, with a mixture of wariness, disbelief, and wonder. “Elias said…,” he whispered to her.

  Interrupting, she said, “Just love him.”

  Openmouthed, he nodded. “I do—how I do.”

  She smiled. “It’s all right, then.”

  It was not all right. Elias lay in his bed day and night, weak, shivering, and barely able to eat or drink. He began to waste away. Michaelmas came and went.

  Elisabeth did not care for needlework, but it was all she had to keep her hands busy. She frowned at a misplaced stitch and muttered, “Damn!”

  “Such language” came her brother’s weak voice from the pillow.

  She looked up and saw his pale face smiling at her. “Elias!” She went to sit next to him on the bed. “Are you feeling better?” It sounded so thoughtless, this vain question.

  Her heart wrenched as he shook his head. “No, I am not. I know I am dying. Please do not argue with me on that. I don’t want to go through what we all went through with Mother refusing to talk about it.”

  Elisabeth’s eyes brimmed over with tears. “Oh, Elias,” she sobbed. “I cannot bear it.”

  “You must. For Albrecht’s sake.” Seeing her eyes widen, he added, “Please, just hear me out.”

  She drew the back of her hand under her nose, sniffed, and nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  He struggled for the breath he needed to go on speaking. “It grieves me to leave you, Liesl, but I am sore afraid for Albrecht. You are the only one who knows about us, you and Magdalena. He is going to need you. He will need to mourn just like a widow, but he won’t be able to do it publicly. You must be his bulwark.” Elias’s words petered out, his strength spent.

  Elisabeth looked deep into his eyes. Her first impulse, a selfish anger that he loved his friend more than his sister, was drowned by what she saw in his gaze. It was his love for and trust in her that made him beg her to take care of Albrecht.

  She put her palm on his cheek and tried to smile. “I understand, my darling. I will be there for him. I promise.” His brow smoothed at her words. There was a new appeal in his eyes. “I will send for him, so you can say your good-byes.” She put her fingers to her lips and transferred a kiss from them to his lips.

  He mouthed, “I love you,” and she felt as if her heart had squeezed to a hard knot in her breast.

  “Elias, I have to tell you something. I don’t want to burden you, but I need to tell someone.”

  His eyes were closed, but he said in a faint whisper, “Go on.”

  Biting the knuckle of her forefinger, she decided to plunge in. “I don’t think I am really your sister.”

  Elias’s eyes shot open. “Not my sis—” he choked out.

  Shushing him, Elisabeth went on. “I mean, I think I am really your brother.” Seeing that he wanted to speak, she put her fingers on his mouth. “Hear me out. I have never felt like a girl. In fact, I don’t think I knew I was a girl until I was maybe seven or eight. I was always so puzzled when Mother would tell the maids to dress me and they put me in clothes different from yours. I kept wanting to scold them for their mistake.”

  Elias weakly lifted one hand and slowly stroked her arm. “But is it not that you don’t like having to live as a woman, not that you are not one?”

  Shaking her head firmly, she replied, “No! It’s more than that. I don’t feel like a girl who just likes boys’ things. I feel like a boy who likes boy things. I don’t know how it can be, but I feel it so strongly. Elias, when I dream, it is that I am a boy. A real one.”

  He gazed at her. “Are you like Albrecht and me, then? Do you still like boys the way he and I do?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t begin to know what to do with a girl if I wanted one either. I will have to think about it.”

  His eyes drooping, unable to stave off sleep, he squeezed her arm. “Let me rest now, my brother.”

  She leaned to kiss his cheek, tears springing to her eyes again with his use of the word “brother.”

  When Albrecht came into the room, he took her hands and searched her face. “He wants to say good-bye,” she explained.

  A sob erupted from deep in his chest and tears ran suddenly down his cheeks. He rushed to the bedside. She quietly shut the door behind her and went to summon Father Boniface to give Elias last rites. After the old priest departed, she closed the door behind her again, leaving Elias and Albrecht alone.

  It was near midnight when the door opened slowly and Albrecht stepped out. Elisabeth was sitting in a window embrasure in the low light of torches and stood when she saw him. They walked to each other, and without a word, put their arms about each other. Albrecht began to weep inconsolably. Elisabeth let her own tears join with his.

  She drew him with her to the embrasure and lowered herself to sit. Taking him in her arms, she held him, rocking and crooning soothingly as he gave way to utter despair.

  Chapter Four

  Lady of the Manor

  ELISABETH HOLLOWLY went through the motions of daily life even after her brother had been laid to rest in the little church next to their mother. Albrecht was nowhere to be seen, having withdrawn from the preparations for Elias’s funeral. Unsure if he had gone entirely, Elisabeth waited, trying to hang onto some sort of consciousness. She was Winterkirche now, at least until her father returned. Would he, wherever he was, learn of his son’s death? Unlikely, as no firm news of him had come since he departed.

  Even now, as tidings of the crusade began to trickle in, there was nothing about Sigismund. Elisabeth heard that, indeed, not long before Pope Urban II passed away, the forces of the Cross had taken Jerusalem. The Holy Father, the architect of the crusade, never knew of its success.

  Elisabeth was sitting in what was now her solar, talking with her steward about mundane matters involving tenants, when a servant came in and bowed to her. “Mistress, the squire Albrecht would like to speak with you.”

  “Well, bring him in! He need not stand on such ceremony!” She sat up straight, smoothed her bodice, and nodded to the steward. “We will finish later, Martin.”

  She stood to greet her friend as he came through the doorway. Her face darkened at the sight of him, thin, haggard. She came around the table, went to him, and took his hands. His eyes were cast down to the rushes on the floor.

  “My lady, I… I…,” he began.

  “Albrecht, my dear, come to the embrasure and sit with me. I was afraid you had left us.”

  Sitting hesitantly by her, he tried again. “My lady, I came to bid you farewell—”

  She did not let him finish. “Farewell? Why?”

  He looked up at her for the first time, his eyes full of perplexity. “My lady, I have no place here. The lord is in the Holy Land and my… the young lord… I was their squire. I have no employment here now.”

  She stared at him, her lips parted. “Oh dear, I had not thought of that. You have been part of our lives; I was thinking you would somehow just stay here. That was selfish of me. You want to be a knight. You can’t do that here. Of course you want to leave.”

  He hesitated, looked about as if for guidance, then admitted, “I do not want to leave. This has been my home, the place where I have been the happiest in my life…. I cannot be sure how I can…. I don’t know if I care about being a knight, not without Elias, the young lord, I mean….”

  “Then why leave? I don’t want you to leave. There must be something you can do here. I promised my brother I would look after you. Oh please, don’t go!” She took his hands in hers and held tight.

  “But, my lady…,” he appealed.

  “Damn it, Albrecht, stop calling me that. I am your sister. Stop being so d
amned servile.”

  Looking into her flashing eyes, he nodded silently and glumly. “Thank you, my l…. Elisabeth.”

  WOODENLY, THE household returned to normal. Elisabeth had acted in her mother’s stead so long, it came to her as rote. One of her duties, now performed alone, was to greet visitors. Preferring the comfort of solitude, Elisabeth bore with the few who came, mostly travelers, two or three returning pilgrims, but none as disruptive as the one who arrived one damp and miserable morning.

  Taking her accustomed place on the steps to the hall after the horn blast augured the approach of a mounted party, Elisabeth composed herself with dignity. The gate opened, and the first of what sounded like a considerable troop of horses rode in. Elisabeth did not believe her eyes at first. The banners, the livery, the face—it was Reinhardt! She thought she might swoon, though she never had done so in her life. He was alive and back from the Holy Land. The solace of her solitude was fractured.

  Reinhardt rode up to just before where she stood with her hand to her mouth in surprise. “Happy to see me, my dear?” he crooned mockingly. He waved off the groom who dragged the mounting block near, and, throwing one leg behind him, deftly dismounted to stand before her. He slowly drew his leather gloves off, took one of her hands, and kissed it, then looked about. “Where is everyone?”

  Elisabeth could not speak. Gratefully, she heard Albrecht approaching from behind her left shoulder. He spoke solemnly. “Your grace, I am sorry to inform you that this lady’s mother and brother have passed on. Lord Sigismund went to the Holy Land many, many months ago.”

  Reinhardt stared at the squire. His eyes shifted back to Elisabeth. “This is true?”

  All she could manage was a nod. She saw Reinhardt take it in and was disgusted at the satisfied look that came across his countenance. She could almost hear his thoughts: Mine! Then it is all mine!

  His men dismounted behind him. He turned to Albrecht and commanded, “Boy, see to it our horses are taken care of and provision made for my men’s quartering.”

  Glancing over her shoulder at Albrecht, Elisabeth saw his pressed lips. She looked quickly back to Reinhardt. “My lord, you are of course more than welcome to Winterkirche. How long do you plan to stay?”

  Reinhardt smiled sardonically. “It talks!” He sighed. “But have you forgotten? I am your husband. Until your father returns, I am lord of Winterkirche.”

  “But… but my lord, what of your own lands? You have been long away,” she asked.

  “Damn,” he breathed. He slapped his leg with a riding crop and seemed to consider. “I will stay a fortnight, then, and return to put my estates in order.” He gave her an annoyed look. “I suppose you cannot be ready to come with me that soon.”

  “But, your grace…,” Elisabeth began.

  A slow smile crept along his lips. “Cannot wait that long, my love?” he said with a mocking leer. He took her hand again and kissed it. “Christ, why are we standing out here? I need a drink and a fire.” He pulled her along after him up the steps and into the hall.

  Reinhardt strode right up to the dais at the end of the hall, climbed, and took the high seat where Sigismund traditionally had presided over meals and court. He pushed back Adalberta’s chair with his foot. “Sit,” he said. He called to the servants who hung about in the shadows along the side of the hall. “Here, you! Bring wine. And something to eat. Someone build up that fire.”

  His men were filing in through the door, eying the rest of the trestle tables where they were stacked against one wall. “Oh, just sit,” Reinhardt called to them irritably.

  Reinhardt ordered servants to bring more chairs and called to his officers to join them at the high table. The wine flowed generously; the boisterous conversation belied the fact that the household was in mourning.

  Reinhardt suddenly leaned to Elisabeth and asked, “Is he buried?”

  She looked at him, startled. “Who?” she asked. She knew whom he meant, but the word came out anyway.

  “Your brother. That sodomite. Is he buried?”

  Her face paled. “Yes, my lord, in the family vault in the church.”

  “Good,” he replied shortly. “I hate funerals.” He went back to talking with his men.

  Listening to the raucous group told Elisabeth what had happened to Reinhardt in the Holy Land. When she was able to break away on the excuse she had to push the kitchen to prepare a feast for her husband and his men, she sought out Albrecht and shared the tale.

  “It seems that once Jerusalem was in Christian hands, the Franks and the Flemings snatched up all the estates and positions. Whatever Reinhardt thought he was going to get, it all went to others. As soon as he realized that, he set sail for home,” she whispered to him in an alcove.

  “More’s the pity he had no reason to stay there,” Albrecht growled.

  “At least I am not alone. You are here,” she said.

  Albrecht shook his head. “I am sorry. I must take leave of you.”

  “Why?” she asked, putting her hand on his arm.

  Albrecht eyed her unhappily. “He may know about me too, and that sort of man is not gentle with my sort.”

  At supper Reinhardt informed Elisabeth, “I have a guest coming with his small retinue tomorrow. I had hoped to introduce him to your father, but ah, well.” He yawned. He reached to take her hand, leaning to look into her face. “Pity I am as tired as I am. I should like to have explored whether under all those unattractive clothes you have a real woman hidden.” He laughed at her offended face. Kissing the hand he clutched in his fist, he said, “Better get used to the idea, my dear. You won’t be a maid much longer.”

  The guest was an old comrade of Reinhardt’s from the Holy Land. He was a Frank, a knight, Gautier du Visage Cassé, and no better a piece of work than Reinhardt himself. He was tall, with the muscular upper body of a swordsman, but his long legs seemed wrong, as if his own had been cut off by a Saracen and a skinnier man’s legs sewn onto his trunk. He had greasy black hair that hung in his face. It was a saving grace, since the long scar that gave him his soubriquet nearly split that face in two. One eye was gone and his eyelid literally sewn shut, the stitches black and ragged. His breath reeked. Even the baron winced when the man leaned into his face to make some bawdy remark.

  “Mon Dieu, Reinhardt! I did not know you were a buggerer. This is a boy, is it not?” He examined Elisabeth, who stood silently next to the baron.

  Gautier went to the dais, stepped up, and took the seat indicated. Reinhardt ushered Elisabeth before him onto the rise and seated her between him and the Frankish knight. Gautier glanced around the hall. “Who died? Everyone is going about with their chins scraping the rushes.”

  Reinhardt looked at Elisabeth, as if waiting for her to answer the man’s question. She cleared her throat. “My lord, my brother died quite recently.”

  “Her twin brother,” Reinhardt added.

  Gautier leveled his one-eyed gaze at her. “Identical twins, or so it seems. Are you sure they didn’t mistakenly bury ‘Elisabeth’?” He laughed at his own joke. “Well, can’t you get some dancers or jongleurs in to lighten the mood? It’s like mass in a poor monastery in here.”

  Reinhardt fingered his beard. He turned questioning eyes to Elisabeth. “Where are the singers and jongleurs I saw here when I last visited? Or have you simply not deigned to summon them to greet me?”

  She lowered her head and replied, “They all left after my brother passed. I suppose they cared not for such a mournful household.”

  He eyed her irritably. “And you did nothing to keep them or hire new? You cannot be trusted to keep this estate. It is as well I returned to take possession.”

  “Can it sing or dance?” Gautier smirked. He was looking at her.

  “No, my lord,” she hastily responded.

  “I told you, Reinhardt, it’s a boy. And not a very pretty one.”

  Reinhardt glowered. He gestured to a servant for wine and changed the topic. “What do you hear of the new call for
crusade, my good fellow?”

  New crusade? It was the first Elisabeth had heard of it.

  Gautier took the cup of wine the servant placed before him. “His Holiness the new pope, Paschal II, I think he styles himself, has called for it. There was a letter sent to the Frankish churchmen. It seems that Baldwin thinks the paynim will try to take back Jerusalem. My brother, who is an abbot, says he calls for ‘all the soldiers of your region to strive for remission and forgiveness of their sins by hastening to our Mother Church of the East; to move their arses thither,’ or words to that effect.” He considered his comrade-in-arms. “Will you go, mon frère?”

  Sitting back in his chair, Reinhardt caught the hopeful look Elisabeth flashed at him. “I am sorry to disappoint you, my dear. I have been to the Holy Land and fought for the faith. Therefore all my sins, past and future, are wiped away as the sun clears the dew. I have no intention of going back to that scorpion-infested, sun-roasted hellhole. Not for God, not for the pope, and certainly not for you.”

  Gautier laughed aloud. “Nor I, chér Reinhardt. I have lands to control, sons to beget, Frankish whores to bed, and wine to consume. But you shall enjoy this. I hear His Holiness singled out those who fled the siege of Antioch, promising they shall linger excommunicate and lightened of their lands and goods, unless they go back and make men of themselves again.”

  Reinhardt slammed his cup of wine onto the table before him, and, slapping his thighs, crowed, “My God! Stephen of Blois will never live that down. So I suppose he is going?”

  The Frank shrugged.

  Elisabeth ventured, “Did he flee the siege? Why?”

  Reinhardt raised his eyebrows as he looked at her. “Interested, are we? Well, yes, he did, and he did it because he is a lily-livered, weak-assed, shameful excuse for a man. He did worse than desert—he convinced Emperor Alexios to turn back with the army he was bringing to assist our armies.”

  Gautier joined in with a squeaky voice. “‘They are dead, all dead, I tell you! Flee, flee for your lives!’”