Sylvia

by Bryce Courtenay

At Schlettstadt I found myself depressed and totally exhausted and grown weak from hunger, though Reinhardt, ever resourceful, would bring me a little food and watch over me as I ate, suspicious that I would take a small portion, then give the remainder to a starving child. ‘Sylvia, if your strength fails we are all done for!’ he would declare in his manner of over-exaggeration. What was true was that Nicholas had begun to falter and I could see he was going into one of his periods of isolation. Then Father Paulus suffered a severe bout of dysentery, a condition that was killing the younger children in increasing numbers.

  After several days when Nicholas’s sermons proved most lacklustre, he finally retired under the sacking cover we had made for the wagon. I knew that he could remain thus for a week or a month or more, and we could not remain where we were and must cross the Alps before the end of high summer. This, I knew, would be the most difficult part of our journey. Without Nicholas to lead us I feared that we must all perish. Increasingly it seemed only the children’s faith in him kept us going. These small creatures, each day turning more skeletal in appearance, still persisted unwaveringly, chanting his name and his many litanies and constantly, though their bellies cramped with hunger, evoking God’s love through him. In their eyes Nicholas was their saviour, as precious to them as if he was Jesus returned to earth to lead them.

  Reinhardt had come to me and suggested that we desert, and instead of admonishing him I let him give tongue to his anxiety. ‘Sylvia, we have made a big mistake and if we continue thus it may be the end of us. You and I can always make a living on the road. Your song and my flute will draw a generous crowd and we may roam wherever we wish.’ He gave a semblance of his old grin. ‘You often speak of meeting Francis of Assisi and telling him a thing or two about birds. We could do this in our own good time and eat well along the way. We are not like the city birds and cannot survive on crumbs. If we cross these mountains with this multitude, all will be certain to perish and you and me with them. How can this be God’s will? How will your conscience carry this heavy load of the sick and the dying?’

  We had tried most valiantly to keep up with the sick and injured, but as the weeks passed the task had become impossible – untreated blisters became sores and the sores ulcers and eventually a child would be crippled and unable to continue. We had tried to leave these children at the villages we passed through, knowing that it would be unlikely with the shortage of food that they’d be cared for, but they would at least be buried when they died. Many of the older girls who had been chaste and virgins had now grown emaciated yet bore the first telltale signs of pregnancy, and others came to us for herbs having spilled a foetus and found themselves still bleeding. We watched helplessly as the smaller children’s stomachs distended from the effects of starvation. We could only stand by as they died like flies from dehydration or dysentery.

  Every morning Father Paulus, with the help of a burial squad of older boys, would gather the corpses and pray over the little bodies. Often we’d be forced to leave those not yet dead with the sole comfort of the last rites, their accusing eyes staring at us, some begging us to save them, yet we knew that they would not survive another sunset. Our trail was becoming littered with the dead and dying. Their flesh was devoured by foxes or village dogs and their bones were picked clean by crow and raven before the peasants could cover them with a final shroud, a simple scoop of earth. Increasingly the bones remained uncovered, the flies the last to feast, until the scattered skeletons lay whitened in the sun. For years to come these would act as the signposts to indicate the passing of the Children’s Crusade.

  Now as we were poised at the foot of the Alps with Reinhardt exhorting me to leave this rapidly escalating disaster, I knew my faith to be sorely tested. How could this be God’s will? Why was He allowing so many of His precious children to perish? They had not sinned. They had not blasphemed. They had no need of repentance. Their hearts were pure and their faith remained implicit. Yet He struck them down in increasing numbers each day. How could these starving children be God’s wish? And then, deep within myself, I knew that I hungered for my own freedom and to be away from all this death and guilt and the despairing eyes of little children who cried out at night for their mothers. I began to sense that somehow the Miracle in St Martin’s square had another translation or intention, that we had misinterpreted God’s command, ‘Our children in Jerusalem!’ All along it had been, as Father Paulus had said at the archbishop’s inquiry, a meaningless contagion among the women of Cologne.

  ‘Nay, Reinhardt, I cannot forsake them now,’ I said softly, and then started to weep.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  On the Road to Jerusalem

  AND SO BEGAN THE last months of our journey by entering the Black Forest and the long and endless climb over the mountains into Italy. I have always loved trees and being alone in the woods, but I soon came to fear these deep dark forests of pine, beech, spruce and fir.

  These were not the bright glades and swinging, breezy branches of the woodlands, but trees that sat with their roots tenaciously gripping the stone and gneiss like the talons of some bird of prey. Old trees have no humour or frivolity with their gnarled and twisted limbs weeping with moss and scarred by lichen, ragged giants that resent any presence but their own.

  As we climbed higher the birds lost their cheerful busyness and took on the slow mournful caw of the crow or the high-pitched screech of the falcon, hawk and eagle, slow-winged carrion birds that lived on the dead or killed in a vortex of feathered fury. The daylight that filtered through the thick dark canopy of ancient pines had a gloom and a foreboding quality as if the tinted air was more accustomed to darkening the shadows than to dancing in sunlight.

  At night came a stygian darkness and with it a slow wind, moaning and sighing through the thickness of the torpid, swaying foliage, and always there was the ghostlike hooting of the forest owl. These deep, dark forests were redolent of lost children and ugly, stumpy, big-nosed, evil-eyed, scaly-clawed creatures that lived in rock fissures, damp caves and holes in giant trees and who peopled fairytales and the nightmares of children who ate meat at night.

  And in the towns the people spoke a difficult German, a dialect and accent with remnants of words derived in part from the Alemannian tribe converted to Christianity in the eighth century by St Boniface. They were the ancient people of these lower mountains and many of the words of these German folk derived from this time. Other words, equally strange to the ear, were borrowed from the Swabian and Franconian dialects. Talking with them was difficult and our children were placed at a great disadvantage when begging for alms as the locals either didn’t, or pretended they didn’t, understand. We soon learned that the people of the Black Forest were by nature tight-fisted, stoical and set in their ways and, like all complacent people, quick to judge and even quicker to condemn. Eight thousand barefooted, ragged, starving children did not seem to them to be the work of a merciful and indulgent God. Without Nicholas’s charismatic preaching, begging food from a suspicious and careful people who lived by the proverb Schaffen, sparen, haus bauen (work, save and build a house) did not inspire generosity.

  Now as we climbed higher the nights grew colder and the air thinner and the food even harder to find. Our children ate unripened fruit and berries they’d gathered in the forest as well as small rodents and other forest creatures, which the more enterprising among them managed to trap. Reinhardt was now piping for rats to feed them, but even these vile creatures were hard to find in these unforgiving mountains. I took to calling in the birds, betraying their trust to add to the meagre rations. Many children died from the cold, as even in summer the nights were freezing and the rags they carried on their backs were not sufficient to protect them. Criminals and madmen who lived in the forests raped the girls and robbed the children of what little they possessed. And every day more died from starvation, cold and disease, and the little ones, those who had miraculously managed to get this far, from despair. Soon we lost count of the dead. The abilit
y to give them extreme unction was not always possible: some simply gave up and crept exhausted into the forest to die; some were too weak even to call out to the mothers they had forsaken. Often the scree and rock prevented the digging of graves and we simply piled the little bodies together and covered them with rocks and stones. Soon the carrion birds learned to follow us, and while we died of starvation they grew so fat some could not lift themselves into the air.

  The two mules were skin and bone and it was increasingly difficult for them to find pasture, and a few days into the high mountains one of them died. One mule in a weakened state was unable to pull the wagon and so we slaughtered it, the two animals providing a meal for perhaps three hundred children who hungrily devoured the raw and half-cooked flesh – and many soon returned it, their stomachs unable to cope. Others rushed at this regurgitation and ate it as dogs do, dirt and all. I filled my Father John satchel with what few herbs and unguents we had left, and Reinhardt exchanged the wagon for ten bags of corn with a farmer greedy for a bargain and we kept going a little longer, each with a single ladle of gruel to last the day.

  Now Nicholas travelled on foot with all of us, silent and withdrawn, a lone spectre in green monk’s robes. He still piously carried the cross first forged in Antioch a hundred years before, where during the long siege of that city many in the First Crusade had starved as our children now did. Some, according to Brother Dominic, had eaten the flesh of humans to survive and many thousands perished, and yet in the end they had succeeded. If God had tested them yet in the end granted them Jerusalem, then perhaps He expected the same from us. We must somehow endure, though I despaired that without the blessed boy’s preaching we would be unable to do so.

  Nicholas’s silent presence among the children was proving a blessing. He was no longer hidden from them under the wagon canopy and they gathered around him and seemed encouraged, if only by the sight of him. Not understanding his lost demeanour, they begged a hundred times each day that he should preach to them. I knew in my heart that if he would do so, showing the old Nicholas had returned to us, the hardships the children so stoically endured would lessen. The heart is a good friend when hope exists and a miserable companion when it is taken away.

  I cannot take the credit for what happened next since it was the ratcatcher’s idea, although I think it perhaps the most important reason why we eventually crossed the mountains with fewer dying than might have occurred. I had expected Reinhardt to leave us when he suggested we forsake the Children’s Crusade but he had not done so. If that moment had been a low point in his usually optimistic mood, he had recovered, and it was his tongue and flute and rat-ridding and rat-finding and tireless encouragement that from that time kept us going. If Nicholas had forsaken us, then it was the Pied Piper who, with an ailing Father Paulus and the healing angels, saved us from complete despair.

  Now seeing the children encouraged by Nicholas’s presence the ratcatcher said to me one morning, ‘Sylvia, we must preach again each night, the children must be given the hope they seemed to gain from Nicholas.’

  I shrugged. ‘Reinhardt, how I wish you could with that pipe of yours summon him back to us. Alas, this time he seems completely lost. Every day I ask him if he wants the magic mushroom, but he shakes his head and will not return from his dark place.’

  ‘Nay, Sylvia, you must preach,’ he said.

  I looked at him astonished. ‘It is not my gift! I do not have this message from God.’

  Reinhardt laughed. ‘But you have another gift worth just as much.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sylvia, you have a memory that never fails you. If I should ask you to repeat word for word every sermon Nicholas has given to the children or the townsfolk I know that you could do so.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, you are also a gifted mimic, the best I’ve ever heard. I have seen you use Nicholas’s voice in jest or when telling of something he has said and all present laugh, for it is as if he himself is speaking.’

  ‘Ah, but I am not Nicholas! The children will not accept me as their leader,’ I protested.

  ‘How will they know?’

  ‘Because I’m a woman, stupid. I have blonde hair and blue eyes and, in case you haven’t noticed, two rather pronounced bumps upon my chest.’

  He laughed. ‘Nice but not so large that they may not easily be flattened by tying them tightly with a band of cloth.’

  ‘Reinhardt, the children know me! We, the healing angels, have ministered to them from the first day. I work with Father Paulus and with you to bury the dead and comfort the dying. They have heard me sing a hundred times! What? Must I pretend that Nicholas has used me as his medium and speaks through me?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that. It might also work.’

  ‘So, what are you suggesting?’

  ‘At night, Sylvia. Preach to them at night, wearing Nicholas’s robes, your face concealed deep within the cowl. You know every sermon and I’ll vouch they cannot tell his voice from your version.’

  I looked at him, astonished. ‘Do you think it will work?’

  ‘Of course!’ he cried optimistically, then shrugged. ‘How will we know if we don’t try?’

  ‘But if it fails?’

  ‘Then we shall use you as a medium as you suggested. It is nearly as good and requires less deception.’

  He looked at me and saw I was frowning, not sure. ‘Sylvia, these children must be given some hope. You can do this, I know you can!’

  ‘Perhaps the medium, eh? That way there is less chance of being caught.’

  ‘Nay, please try the other first. If we can bring Nicholas back to lead them they will be much the stronger for it!’ Reinhardt urged.

  ‘What think you, Father?’ I asked loudly, turning to Father Paulus.

  ‘If we deceive we do so to God’s glory and I am not troubled by this duplicity, but I think Reinhardt right, the presence of Nicholas himself will be much the stronger encouragement.’

  We had reached the high mountains well above the tree line where bitter winds blew incessantly and the landscape consisted of scree, rock, coarse grasses and juniper bushes. The mountain passes were most dangerous to navigate, so that many children, weak with hunger and with their eyesight and their balance affected, plunged to their deaths in the chasms and roaring rapids below. We had been many days in the mountains and had reached the highest point and would soon start the descent into Italy. If we could but place a little more courage in each small heart we might save more from dying. And so the rumour was started that Nicholas would preach that night.

  Earlier Reinhardt, Father Paulus and myself drew Nicholas aside and put the plan to him. Despite his despondency and to our chagrin he was opposed to it. ‘They have only one leader and it is me! I am the only one who has the divine right!’ he sulked.

  ‘But, Nicholas, we accept this! We would not usurp your leadership, but instead show all the children that it persists,’ Father Paulus explained.

  ‘They will know it isn’t me!’ Nicholas said in a churlish voice.

  ‘We will find out soon enough,’ Reinhardt said brightly. ‘If they do, we are not much worse off. If they don’t, then they will take great heart from your reappearance.’

  Nicholas looked at me despairingly. ‘You know I cannot help this devil’s time that comes upon me!’

  ‘Aye, Nicholas, but the children are dying as much for lack of heart as of starvation. We must try.’

  He seemed to be thinking, then at last looked up and addressed me again. ‘This is a holy robe I wear. If you, a woman, should wear it, that would amount to sacrilege.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot allow it!’

  ‘Nay, Nicholas, that is not true!’ Father Paulus said. ‘Garments are only holy if worn by the Christ figure, the Virgin, the apostles, St Paul and various saints and martyrs, though not all.’

  ‘What are you saying? That I am not among these?’ Nicholas demanded to know. We all looked at each other, too confounded to
reply. Then he said, ‘Am I not the one who had the vision of the angel who bore a message from our Lord Jesus that I should lead the children to Jerusalem? I do not see any other among you who can make this claim! Does this not entitle me? Are these robes I wear not sacred and blessed by God?’

  He pointed angrily at me. ‘Now you would place them on the body of a woman!’ He paused and shook his head vigorously as if trying to rid himself of an unpleasant thought. ‘I’m sorry, Sylvia, I must be plain-spoken in this matter. I cannot allow you to commit such a terrible blasphemy!’

  Father Paulus was the first to recover and to find his voice. ‘Nicholas, it is not seemly that you speak of yourself as you do,’ he chided, though gently. ‘It is for God to decide and the Church to proclaim any beatification and this is done after your death. In truth, until that time, we all remain mere mortals and your robe is not yet holy and may well be worn by any other.’

  ‘But by a woman!’ Nicholas protested, plainly mortified. ‘A woman who bleeds . . . down there!’

  If Father Paulus was shocked by this profanity, he didn’t show it. The old Father Paulus would have run for his life, completely mortified, but this was a different person, a priest who had been through a baptism of fire and knew God would test him even further. He wasn’t to be waylaid by a silly sensibility. ‘Aye, by Sylvia, who is your beloved friend. Our hope is that this small and harmless deception brings courage to the flock you lead. They are much in need of your encouragement and the sound of your voice. It is your voice and leadership that drives them onward and your honour and piety that is served.’ Father Paulus, with the constant need to beg for food for his children, was also becoming an expert in persuasion.

  Nicholas, confused by the compliment and forgetting his objection to me wearing his robe of but a moment or two ago, now looked at me, appealing. ‘It’s not my fault! Tell them, Sylvia, tell them it is not my fault! I cannot speak! My tongue is tied by the devil! I cannot! I cannot! I must wait for Jesus to return!’ His voice was now that of a small sobbing child trying to explain his hurt feelings to his mother.