Quest of Hope: A Novel

by C. D. Baker

  QUEST OF HOPE

  © 2005 by C. D. Baker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations in books and critical reviews.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62111-044-6

  This story is a work offiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.

  First Printing, 2005

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Printing/Year 09 08 07 06 05

  Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

  To those humbled souls seeking grace

  to endure the pursuit of Truth

  Editor’s note: please find at the back of this book powerful discussion questions for group or personal study (Readers’ Guide, p. 479), as well as a helpful Glossary (p. 491) for clarification of terminology and historical information.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Book 1: Die Ordnung (The Order) 1174 – 1206

  Chapter 1: The Code

  Chapter 2: Saints and Sinners

  Chapter 3: The Feud

  Chapter 4: Madonna and the Witch

  Chapter 5: Courage and Grace

  Chapter 6: The Vow of the Worm

  Chapter 7: A Secret Revealed

  Chapter 8: Trials, Dreams, and Fear

  Chapter 9: Guilt and Mystery

  Chapter 10: A Vow Kept

  Chapter 11: A New Friend

  Chapter 12: The Brown Serpent

  Chapter 13: The Grindstone and A Gift

  Chapter 14: The Garden Poem

  Chapter 15: Losses

  Chapter 16: Life

  Chapter 17: The Decision

  Book 2: Die Verwandlung (The Wandering) 1206 – 1212

  Chapter 18: Farewell

  Chapter 19: The Choice

  Chapter 20: A New Journey Begins

  Chaper 21: Endless Gray

  Chapter 22: Salt and Light

  Chapter 23: Penance

  Chapter 24: Anfechtung and Purpose

  Chapter 25: The Final Pursuit

  Readers’ Guide

  Glossary

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am happy to express my gratitude to my wife, Susan, and the wide circle of family and friends who have offered supportive criticism and encouragement. The tale that follows would be very different without their good sense! I would like to thank my agent, Lee Hough, and my skilled editor, Craig Bubeck, as well as the many other enthusiastic professionals at RiverOak who have given life to this project. My heartfelt appreciation is extended to those whose unselfish support made my work more fruitful and enjoyable: my dear friends and distant cousins in Weyer, Germany; my old friend, Henk Haak of the Netherlands, who was a great help in Stedingerland; Father Vincenzo Zinno of S. Maria in Domnica Church and Mr. Constante Bucci, the curator of the Sancta Sanctorum, in Rome for their patience and generous hospitality; Joseph and Elisabeth Christ who labored over difficult translations; draft-copy critics such as my son David, my father and stepmother Charles and Elizabeth; and friends Mrs. Karen Buck, the Rev. Matthew Colflesh, and Mr. Edward Englert. Finally, let me thank Dr. Stephen Meidahl, Mr. David McCarty, and the Rev. Dr. Rock Schuier who, among others, contributed a wealth of spiritual wisdom, without which this story would be meaningless.

  INTRODUCTION

  The hushed forests of Northern Europe stood like whispering sentinels keeping watch over the fog that shrouded the folk of legends and dreams until the legions of Rome climbed the Alps and nibbled at the edges of Germania. In due time the armies of the caesars subdued the clans of fair-skinned migrants dwelling there and seized what treasures they could find. As with all great empires, however, the Romans did more than just take for themselves. They blessed these lands with law, language, systems of administration, and means of commerce. And when the glory of Rome was laid to ruin, these gifts were left behind as a monument to her might.

  Then, beginning in the fifth century A.D., another army eyed the lands of Europe. Traveling the very roads the Romans built, a small but brave band of light-bearers brought hope to a continent now covered in darkness. These determined soldiers were the spiritual descendants of St. Patrick and bore names like Columcille, Brendan the Navigator, and Columbanus. Called the “White Martyrs,” they sailed from the rugged shores of Celtic lands to bring the Gospel of Christ to the peoples of Europe.

  The lasting influence of these Irish missionaries is immeasurable, for the peoples of Europe quickly cast aside their pagan gods and with them the terrors and bondage these gods imposed. No longer fearful of the earth, they plunged wheeled ploughs deep into the soil and built villages within the comforting shadow of stone monasteries. During this time of dramatic change, Christianity remained the common bond that connected the new order to the virtues of chivalry, courage, sacrifice, and loyalty. Submissive to the sovereigns of the land, devout men and women of sincere faith committed their lives to serving the needs of body and soul. It was the time known as the “Low Middle Ages.”

  Cultures, like individuals, are inherently sown with the seeds of their own change. Each system of man’s genius is sprinkled with just enough flaws to germinate imperfection and, subsequently, discontent. It is no surprise, therefore, that a revolution of immense proportion occurred during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Known as the Papal Revolution of Pope Gregory VII, it began with the twenty-seven theses of the Dictatus Papae issued in 1075. In political terms, the Revolution established the pope’s absolute supremacy over temporal rulers. In so doing, he inadvertently created a new realm known as “Christendom.” Under threat of eternal damnation, the rulers of Europe’s many kingdoms submitted their autonomy to the Church and, in so doing, yielded their armies as vassals of the pope.

  With the knights of Christendom now at his disposal, the pope could strike a meaningful blow against the expanding Islamic empire. In 1095 Pope Urban called for the First Crusade, and over the next century subsequent popes and their subservient kings waged a violent defense of Christendom. The consequential influence of the Crusades requires volumes. Suffice it to say that seeds of change in Europe were well watered by the blood of Christian and Moslem alike. Transportation improved and commerce was enlivened. Fairs and huge markets for trade were created, as were systems of credit, banking, and insurance. New agricultural methods so significantly impacted harvest yields that the population surged.

  It is these “High Middle Ages” that is the setting for the following story. It was an amazing time, for it was then that modern languages began to take their shape and when music began to move away from monophonic chants to take polyphonic form. Epic poetry, such as the Song of Roland, was written, and Bernard de Ventador touched hearts with his romance literature. Architecture began to reflect the spirit of the changing culture as well. Churches were no longer built with the squat, fortress-like characteristics of the Romanesque style, but rather in the triumphal confidence of the Gothic as expressed in Notre Dame and the Canterbury Cathedral.

  Unfortunately, it was also an age that was in dire need of further rescue. Life was unspeakably hard. Pestilence, hunger, and violence were a part of everyday life. The lowly serfs suffered the most. They could not marry without consent, own land, freely leave the manor to which they were bound, nor avoid the confusing and weighty obligation of taxes, tithes, duties, and fines that maintained their poverty. Lacking liberty,
health, and learning, this great host of souls languished through short, miserable lives in timid expectation of God’s imminent Judgment. Life was viewed as little more than preparation for death.

  This story is a tale of common life in the Middle Ages. These ordinary events and seasons in the tiny village of Weyer, located in the very heart of Christendom, embrace dyers and millers, reeves and yeomen, housewives and witches. It was these simple folk who served their lords as the muscle and sinew of Western Civilization. So, though you shall encounter knights and lords, monks and merchants, it is the simple Volk with whom you shall break bread.

  Under the guiding light of Truth, history is one of our greatest teachers. From the past we can learn much about hatred, vengeance, and loss; and much about love, forgiveness, and grace. It is wisdom that is the great gift of history, and what wisdom teaches us is that Hope is our faithful companion—even in the village of Weyer.

  Veritas Regnare

  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

  Brave 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 c
lose 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.