by C. D. Baker
Anoush led the trembling wretch toward his cot. “Tantatio tristitae!” she whispered. “Beware the temptation to despair. You are not without hope, my son.” Heinrich groaned and stared up at the sad brown eyes of the bent-backed saint. “You don’t understand, sister. I must lose all hope. Hope brings joy.”
On the morning that followed, Heinrich stood on trembling legs at first-meal and tore his rye in two. “Through this Lent I, too, shall deny m’self. Until Holy Saturday I eat half and share the rest with these poor.” Those gathered simply stared.
The man’s decision was another one rooted in deception. He believed his beaten, ravaged body was little more than the prison of his spirit; as if his outward shell was an unjoined appendage, a lesser thing, an unworthy annoyance to be abused and neglected… like the reeve’s dog. But the man, like all men, was a whole. His body, though long-suffering, would not allow such inane abuse—and it finally rebelled. On the night of Holy Thursday, in the third week of March, the “Worm of Santa Maria’s” lay unconscious on the seventh step of the Scala Santa.
The night guards of the pope’s palace knew the man well and sent a messenger to the church. Sister Anoush, of course, was the first to react. She yanked a big novice from his bed, harnessed the horse to its cart, and prodded the beast to hurry. She then marched up the Holy Stairs with her novice in tow, sharply dismissing all demands they climb on their knees. She laid a kind hand on Heinrich’s sweated brow as the novice lifted him.
Heinrich was delivered to his bed midst the loud complaints of Fathers Vincenzo, Arturo, and Florian. They were in no mood for this. Their own Lenten fasts made them irritable under the best of conditions, and now they were rousted from a good night’s sleep to carry this foul-smelling Teuton to his stale cot. “No more!” growled Vincenzo. “I wash my hands of him!”
Heinrich awakened somewhere in the afternoon hours of Holy Saturday. He had been bathed and dressed in clean linens by Anoush, who had also trimmed his hair and beard. He was sallow and sweated, too weak to even mutter a word, but when he heard another ringing the bells of nones he knew his mighty penance had failed.
The man closed his eye and his chest began to heave. Trembling, he rolled away from the blessed sister and moaned. Soon his breathing was halting and his shoulders began to jerk. Anoush gently laid both hands on him. He began to shake and lurch as the frightened Anoush prayed loudly. Suddenly she stopped and simply held him close, for the man was not wrestling in the throes of death, but rather sobbing like a child.
Heinrich lay in the care of his aged nurse for weeks. His fever had passed but his body was frail. By late April he was baking bread once again and helping the novice with the bells. In exchange for lodging and food, broken Heinrich humbly asked to serve in whatever ways his improving health might allow until he was strong enough to begin his journey home. His request was reluctantly granted with the stipulation that he not remain past the first day of July.
In the warm weeks of springtime, Heinrich spent hours listening to the words of Sister Anoush as he helped tend her gardens. She was wise and encouraging. She worked in apparent vain to teach him the proper order of things, that nothing on earth—no king, no pope, no village priest or reeve, nor high-minded notion—ruled with authority unless it ruled according to God’s Law of Love.
Despite her kindness and her instruction, the man remained numb, empty, and woefully shamed. His penance had miscarried, and he believed his many years away from home had been in vain. It was a new weight of sorrow he could scarcely bear. More than that, he had no more solution, no goal in view that might lighten the millstone hanging heavy on his shoulders. Everything had failed him, including himself. His spirit was wounded and scarred, barred from wisdom, closed to hope. He suffered the horrors of Anfechtung—the aching, unrequited contest for the soul.
In early June, Sister Anoush begged the priests to allow Heinrich the tasks of the carter. She hoped a change in the man’s monotony might kindle some spark of life. So, with some hesitation, the man was given charge of the two-wheeled cart and sent about Rome delivering eggs, carrying children to adoptive homes, fetching foundlings, bearing dispatches, and other sundry chores.
Bouncing atop Rome’s cobbles helped awaken something within the joyless man. He was particularly taken by the beauty of the Pantheon. Once the grand temple of the Roman gods, it had become a Christian church six hundred years before. The pilgrim stared up at its huge, domed ceiling, opened in the very center to the blue sky. Heinrich quickly looked down. “Cursed vow!” he grumbled. He wasn’t sure it had meaning any longer, but he was not ready to abandon all.
The man began to enjoy his days riding in the Italian sunshine. He marveled at the ruins of Rome’s glorious past, now mere mounds of stubble rising up from the dirt and debris of the centuries. He passed the forum and imagined the voices of the senators echoing amongst the goats now chewing grass atop what once had been the world’s seat of power. He trotted his little horse through Constantine’s arch and pretended to be a charioteer in a Roman legion following the emperor to the far-flung reaches of the world.
By Midsummer’s Day, Heinrich thought the decaying city to be redeemed, in part, by its scattered gardens and wildflowers, songbirds and the few fountains that yet sprayed water in the sun-bathed air. He watched a few squealing children splash in one and Heinrich paused to think of his own good lads. He could see them frolicking in the Laubusbach. The man reached into his satchel and retrieved his stone. He swished it in the fountain’s waters and chuckled. “There, little charm, you’d be baptized in the waters of Rome!” He rubbed the smooth stone between his fingers and thumb, then dropped it back into his bag. “Home,” he resolved. “’Tis time.”
Indeed it was. And in the early hours of the first day of July in the Year of Grace 1212, Sister Anoush walked her dear friend before the marvelous mosaic of Santa Maria in Domnica. There, the ragged, broad-shouldered German and his frail, stooped, Armenian friend stood silently together one last time as the rising sun illuminated the flowers of the fields and the robes of the angels. The golden halo of the Holy Child sparkled like a ring of jewels against the deep blue robes of the Virgin, and the saints glowed all around.
Heinrich’s eye lingered along the gold-eyed, red blooms and his mind flew to Emma and her corn poppies. His heart filled with the colors of the rainbow; the fruit of the sun. He lifted Sister Anoush’s knotty hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly.
Don Vincenzo broke the silence. “Sister, tell him I’ve come to release him.”
Heinrich’s mood changed as he was led to the confessional. There, he dutifully offered a short list of committed sins, but he had already reasoned it was probably useless. Whatever absolution God might have granted by His grace would certainly be rejected out-of-hand, for the man had held his own soul in the scales—and he found it wanting. God’s love was surely conditioned on his sincerity, and his sincerity was disproven by his failings. Not only did he expect his eternal state to be in the gravest peril, but his temporal indulgence would not now be granted either. His incomplete penance would leave a reckoning still due on earth, one that both he and his family must pay as penalty.
At Anoush’s insistence, Vincenzo charitably pronounced the man’s sins forgiven in heaven and remitted on earth. The priest let his words ring with the authority of the Church, but Heinrich’s heart was now cold to things of the order. To the baker of Weyer, it—like he—had failed.
With a bow and a final mumble Vincenzo disappeared from the nave, leaving Anoush a few final moments with her friend. Heinrich was sullen, though he did not complain of his unhappiness. He quietly slipped away from Anoush to the crypt below the altar, where he stood before his mother’s medallion. The relic had been draped gracefully over the neck of an olive-wood crucifix standing alongside a small painting of the Virgin. The man knelt alone in the candlelit chamber and recalled many moments of his former times. It was a bittersweet respite. Suddenly weary of such recollections, he sighed, then rej
oined Anoush. He wrapped an arm lightly around her frail shoulders and bowed his head.
Anoush stood by her weary friend and would have stayed there all the day had not she heard the man draw a deep breath. She knew the time had come. She turned him toward her face and bade him to kneel. She laid her hands gently on his head and smiled. “Ah, dear, dear Heinrich. I shall pray you fly free from your cocoon.” She smiled tenderly. “In the meanwhile, I have stuffed your satchel heavy with cheese and fruit, some dried fish and vegetables pulled by my own hand. The children have stuffed your rucksack with bread and some preserves.” She stopped to fight back tears.
“Now, if you would allow, I should like to send you with my blessing.” The wise woman closed her eyes and tilted her head upward. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Attend to my cry: for I have been brought low indeed. Deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I. Lead my soul out of prison, that I may praise Thy name.” Her eyes blurred and her voice trembled. She embraced Heinrich, then walked him to the door.
Heinrich could barely speak. “I… shall always remember you, Sister Anoush. You saved my life; please pray for my soul and that of mine household.”
Anoush nodded, unable to utter a sound.
“And I shall think of you always and of what you taught me … and of this mosaic.” Heinrich turned to gaze upon the sparkling field of flowers one last time. He embraced the woman, then turned quickly away.
The man hurried for the door, but before he reached it he heard the old saint’s trembling voice calling after him. “I shall lift up mine eyes unto the mountains, from where shall my help come? Mine help comes from the Lord God, who made heaven and earth. To you, O God, I lift up mine eyes to you who are enthroned above the sun. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of the master, so our eyes look to the Lord until he is gracious unto us.”
Heinrich could not look back. His eye was blurred and his heart was filled with grief; he would never see the good woman again. Yet leave he must. Confused and ashamed, he was too weary to think. No longer could he weigh the perils of his soul, nor consider his plight. He needed to go home.
Heinrich chose a circuitous route out of the city in order to linger along the shores of the Tiber River one last time. He arrived at its mucky banks sometime past sext and paused to watch the bluishgreen waters ease through its wide bends. He set his back against a thick, scaly-trunked pine and stared into the patches of seaweed and the scattered white rocks along the river’s muddy bottom. “What tales those rocks could tell,” he mused.
Heinrich stood and followed the Tiber northward, past the bridge leading to the ancient, round fortress known as the Castel Sant’Angelo. The man hastened along his route, past scurrying clerics and their acolytes, merchants, pilgrims, men-at-arms, misfits, castoffs, fugitives, and beggars. The sunbaked brick and broken marble of a former time now barely drew his notice, for he began to dream of the spruce-scented air of his own northern forests.
He hurried by the home-fortresses of Rome’s elite—the walled villas guarded by well-armed soldiers as if they were miniature empires in danger of a siege. He passed churches and abandoned temples, gardens and neglected orchards. At last Heinrich arrived at the Porta Flaminia, the northern gate in Aurelian’s ancient wall. He paused for barely a moment and gave one final look to the tile-roofed city. He wiped the sweat gathered across his brow, then shook his head and drew a deep breath.
Heinrich of Weyer was now thirty-eight years old. Most of his generation had passed into their graves, but those who yet lived were now likely to survive another seven or even ten years, and a few fortunates, like dear Anoush, might live three score and ten or beyond. Thanks to the old nun, the baker had regained much of his former bulk and he now walked with a healthy stride. Remarkably, he still retained a good deal of the red in his hair, though his freshly trimmed beard was nearly all gray. His shoulders were thick again and broad. His face was full, even fleshy, and his blue eye keen. His back was straight and his legs muscular. With his dagger in his belt, a patch over his right eye, and a stump for a left arm, fellow travelers were apt to keep a wary distance. Despite his physical health, however, the man’s mood was still somber and devoid of hope.
Heinrich marched north in the uninvited company of pilgrims, couriers, and caravans of traders. The summer season had crowded the roadways with columns of men-at-arms, long convoys of wagoners, horsemen, oxen, two-wheeled carts, and groups of monks huddled around their donkeys. Heinrich made good time through the rolling landscape of Umbria, but did better yet across the wide plain of the Po Valley. Pouring much of his frustration into his stride, the man covered six and sometimes seven leagues per day.
Milan was a city worthy of a traveler’s rest, and Heinrich delayed one day to duck a heavy summer storm that pounded the flat fields of Lombardy. He found shelter with a fellow baker with whom he exchanged some ideas for sweetening bread. In the afternoon he dozed, only to suddenly startle awake to see a quick-footed, fair-haired imp make off with his rucksack.
“Ach, poor wretch,” he murmured.
“Eh?” A tall man walked by.
“I said, poor wretch. She took m’bag.”
“Ja. She nearly ran me over on the way by. She’s sure to be one of those pitiful child crusaders. My name is Horst, from Frankfurt on the Rhine.”
“Child crusaders?” asked Heinrich.
“Aye. You’ve not heard? The pope cries that the cause is lost in Palestine, so it seems an army of children is marching south on a fool’s errand to save the Holy Land themselves! A lad in Cologne had a vision. Now thousands of the little waifs are coming, most in a large column from Cologne, but rumors are that others ‘ave heard the news and come in little bands this way and that. Some say they’re bringing pestilence and God’s wrath with ‘em.”
“It cannot be so.” Heinrich shook his head.” ‘Tis madness. Even if they could get to Palestine, the Turks would slaughter them like lambs. The priests would ne’er let them go.”
“I speak what is true!” Horst was indignant. “Most claim the sea shall open for them so they’ll cross over like the Hebrews did the Red Sea … but I should think ships to be the more likely way. And the French children are coming as well; they’d be marching to Marseilles! They think God will convert the infidels by the purity of their hearts.”
Heinrich still doubted that such a thing could be true. But, if it is, he thought, Marta would ne’er let m’lads follow. He changed the subject. “Frankfurt? I’ve a sister in Frankfurt. She married a merchantman named Jan.” Heinrich hadn’t thought of his sister in a long time. He smiled at the memories.
“Hmm. Jan.” Horst brightened a moment. “I’ve business with a shipper named Jan … and methinks I’ve heard a word ’bout his Frau wearin’ the breeches of the house!”
“Ha! Could be her! What can you tell me of them?”
Horst paused. “I’m sorry, stranger, but I’ve no business with him lately.”
Heinrich sighed. He was disappointed. “What other news ’ave you, sir. I’ve been on pilgrimage for years.”
“Ah, the world is much the same. The pope still favors young Friederich for emperor. That little switch had brought some confusion to the lords! Seems whenever the pope belches the wind changes. I’m glad to be a freeman. Were I a vassal I’d fear to rise in the morning.”
Heinrich nodded. A freeman, he thought, I shall never be.
The days were warm and the sky was cloudless as the baker pushed north into the southern range of the Alps. Lago Como was so beautiful that even the downcast Heinrich was unable to pass it by without a brief rest. The man collapsed in the tall, green grass, hungry and exhausted. He stared at the lake’s blue waters and wondered what recourse was left for his miserable soul; to what source might he finally appeal? There was little left for him in the order of things as he knew it. As he drifted off to sleep, long-ago whispers nudged him to seek another way.
Heinrich awoke to the pleasant sounds of water la
pping a pebbled shore. He gazed at the southern slopes of the Alps rising all around him, but he still did not dare lift his eye too high. He spat, then dug his hand into his satchel to find his treasure from home; his little stone with the etching of his mark. He wiggled his fingers beneath the layers of compressed fish and cheese that Anoush had stuffed inside until he felt an odd-shaped pouch. He paused and let his hand test the pouch’s size and shape before he withdrew it slowly. It felt heavy, as if it were stuffed with coins. His heart began to race as he pulled the string that bound it closed, and to his utter astonishment the pouch was filled with nearly all the gold coins he had given to the church. “Anoush!” he exclaimed. “You … you—” The man’s heart lifted. Yet it was not the sight of gold that filled the man with something fresh. It was the unconditional love of one who cherished him despite his shame. Stunned, humbled, glad-hearted, and suddenly hopeful, the man from Weyer stood to his feet.
The busy roads leading to the Julier Pass were tight and crowded. The Julier was the most popular mountain pass in summertime and had ushered migrating tribes and travelers north and south since before time was recorded. From the south the approach wound its way higher and higher through forests of long-needled pines. Jagged peaks edged each side of the roadway, and as Heinrich marched upward the trees grew scarce before disappearing altogether. Here the mountains were wet with rivulets of rushing water plunging clear and clean from unseen heights.
The walk above the tree line was one full day, but Heinrich barely noticed the thinness of the air nor the ache in his straining legs. Instead he felt oddly serene in the calm desolation of the place. He turned away from the trail near the summit’s toll to sit alone atop a boulder where he could eye the rugged panorama spread before him. Sitting quietly in the eerie silence, it was as though he could hear the words of Anoush’s farewell whispering softly in the wind. “I lift up mine eyes to you who are enthroned above the sun.” The psalmist’s image beckoned the man to another way; it pointed him to things beyond the world he knew. But, despite the hallowed hush of that high and holy haven, the melancholy peasant still dared not turn his eye upward.