Sylvia

by Bryce Courtenay

  Alas, Brother Bruno was tone-deaf, but made up for this by exhorting the crowd to be generous and was a born manager and a fusspot. The huge bulk and merry natures of the two surrogate brothers and brothers in Christ made for safe and joyful company.

  However, our greatest pride, for which we daily gave thanks to our precious Saviour, was that all fifty-six children had survived the terrible journey from Cologne. If they looked like ragged little barefoot beggars, their sores were beginning to heal in response to regular food and an unguent made from calendula, a flowering plant from the marigold family. The Abbess Sophia of Piemonte had Sister Infirmaress prepare this for us. The good sister, known as ‘the fearless one’, was almost as good as Frau Sarah, and when she’d first seen Father Pietro’s unblemished face she’d clapped and then clasped her hands together and cried out, ‘Glory be to God! It must be the St John’s wort I added to the mixture!’

  I had been dreading the prospect of meeting up with Nicholas again and although I knew he no longer had any divine power to influence me, I also knew he had come to the end of his journey. Like King Canute, who had been persuaded by his sycophantic subjects that he could stem the tide, I knew in my deepest being that the sea would not still to the touch of Nicholas’s feet. He had always been certain that this was to be the supreme gift to him from the angel, his own personal miracle. In the days before we’d parted he would increasingly proclaim, ‘When I tread upon the sea to make a shining path, then all of Christendom will witness that I have become a living saint!’ Without Father Paulus to pull him into line his vaingloriousness knew no bounds.

  I simply couldn’t imagine what might happen to him when he stepped into the harbour and sank up to his neck, as I felt certain he would. I had no idea if he could swim, but as he was born an urchin on the banks of the Rhine, I supposed he could.

  We arrived in Genoa on the 25th of August in the year 1212 and made straight for the harbour. What a chaotic scene it proved to be, for near three thousand children had arrived and there was much singing and blaring of discordant trumpets and waving of ragged banners. The starving children clung to the ragged groups they’d formed and it was clear a great many of them had reached the end of their endurance and lay forlorn and abandoned on the dockside.

  Many children called out to me. ‘Sylvia! You have come. You have not forsaken us!’ or ‘Will you sing when the glorious path across the sea is shown to us?’ or ‘We are safe now that you and the piper are among us!’ I felt a great lump in my throat and it was difficult not to cry out in despair at their misery and at the hope they still clung to. We had decided to sing, with Reinhardt and the two monks leading at the front. But now I cried out that we must not, the energy of our own ragged urchins would be too obvious among the lethargic and broken children in our midst. We would be flaunting our good fortune.

  Yet for all this, these child pilgrims still believed. My heart near broke when I thought how they might become when they saw no miracle, when the remorseless waves continued to lap onto the harbour front. They had put all their trust in Nicholas and had endured the impossible journey. The three thousand or so starvelings that remained still carried a burning faith for Jesus and the cross and they believed that they would reach Jerusalem to regain the Holy Sepulchre. What would happen when their faith was finally plundered, stolen forever from them? Would they turn on Nicholas? Many were in such a parlous state that I knew they would simply lie down and die; having abandoned all hope they would close their weary eyes and not have the strength or will to open them again.

  Father Pietro had obtained (or so he said) permission from the monkey bishop to instruct the two monks in the final anointing and had carefully written down the procedure so they might learn it on the way to Genoa. I did not tell him that, sadly, I knew every word and could recite them in my sleep. When I wasn’t taking language lessons from Brother Bruno I would rehearse them both. They would also help the parish priest to give the last sacrament to those children we found dying in the towns on the way. By the time we reached Genoa they were well versed in the catechism of death.

  It wasn’t difficult to find Nicholas. A great crowd of children milled around him on what must have been an open part of the foreshore. It was from here that the trumpets blared and from where snatches of the hymns sung on the crusade reached us. As we drew nearer I could see that he stood on the deck of a fishing boat drawn onto the beach so that he might be above the milling crowd. He wore his green monk’s habit and carried his tau cross and it seemed from the excited children around him that he had just completed preaching. He was flushed of face and his eyes carried an unnatural brightness and I could see he was still glorying in the adulation he was receiving. He had become imbued with a sense of his own importance and power. Just by looking at him I knew that he still believed the waters would harden at the touch of his feet to create the miraculous pathway that, in his mind, would establish his qualities as a saint.

  The two monks, almost obscene in their bulk and appearance of wellbeing, who towered over the skeletal children, pushed through the crowd so I was able to get close enough to Nicholas. ‘Nicholas, we’re here, we have arrived!’ I called out. He had his back slightly turned to me and while I felt sure he must have heard me he gave no sign of having done so. ‘Nicholas, it’s Sylvia, Sylvia and Reinhardt!’ I shouted again. He turned slowly. ‘You’re late!’ he called down. ‘We’ve been here two days!’ His voice was edged with annoyance. I smiled, ignoring his rude rebuttal, and replied, ‘Small children, short legs!’

  He turned his back to me to face the bulk of the crowd and lifted the tau cross high. ‘In two hours, at sunset we will commence to walk across the sea, along the shining path!’ he announced, then added, ‘Tell all to make ready, we will walk under a full moon God will send to light our way.’

  ‘It’s a new moon tonight,’ Reinhardt laughed at my side.

  A great roar rose up from the mob of children. Brass trumpets blared, tattered banners were hoisted and various groups broke into spontaneous song. Our own children and many others around us tasted the two beautiful words on their tongues – ‘shining path,’ they kept repeating.

  I waited until I thought it possible for him to hear me. ‘Nicholas, we must talk!’ I called again.

  ‘Not now, can’t you see I’m busy!’ he shouted back angrily.

  I was not to be put off. ‘When?’ I shouted, trying to keep the annoyance from my voice.

  He sighed visibly. ‘Tonight, on the shining path!’

  ‘Nay! I must see you now! It cannot wait!’

  I could see the furious look on his face as he crossed the small deck to stand over me. ‘Who do you think you are?’ he screamed. ‘I am Nicholas of Cologne and I must be obeyed! I am of a mind to forbid you to come with us! You seek only the glory! You wish to take it from me! I will not have it! It is me who heard the voice of the angel, Jesus speaks only to me! You hear? I am his spokesman!’ he shouted, wagging his finger at me, and then he stamped his foot like a small boy.

  I might well have lost my temper were it not for this last childish action. Nicholas, I could see, was close to breaking point.

  ‘Nicholas, I am not coming with you. Please listen, there will be no shining path across the sea!’

  ‘What? What did you say?’ He had yet to address me by my name.

  ‘It won’t happen. Can’t you see what we have done is wrong? Come with me to Rome. It is only a month’s journey. We will ask the Pope to cancel the vota and declare the Children’s Crusade over.’ As if to emphasise my despair I added, ‘Too many children have died, too many still suffer, you cannot go on with this.’

  He drew back as if I had struck him across the face. ‘Blasphemer!’ he yelled, backing away and pointing at me. ‘Blasphemer! Blasphemer!’ he repeated. Then he went down on his knees with one forearm shielding his eyes, the other still pointing at me. ‘Satan, get thee away from me!’ he screamed, and then collapsed to the deck weeping.

  A dozen bigger b
oys forced their way towards us. I would later learn that they were his bodyguards, the ones who ate first of whatever was available. They were referred to fearfully by the other children as ‘The First Biters’ and several of the young females claimed to have been raped by them. There were said to be fifty of these young bullies who hadn’t been present when we had broken into groups.

  One of the larger specimens now came up to me and stood with his snotty face so close to me I could smell his rancid breath. He sniffed a glob of mucus back into his nostril and jabbed a dirty finger into my chest. ‘Bugger off!’ he growled. Then he grabbed my habit at the neckline to further threaten me or perhaps to throw me off my feet. But my knee smashed into his groin first and he let out a yelp, like a dog suddenly struck, then collapsed into a foetal position, groaning and clutching at his pubescent manhood.

  I felt a pair of strong arms embrace me from the back and was about to struggle and bite when I realised they were black. ‘Come, Sylvia, it is time to go now,’ Brother Aloysius said gently into my ear. My language lessons were coming along nicely – I understood every word and unhappily withdrew with the two huge monks on either side of me. A nervous Reinhardt, piping for our children to follow us, looked exceedingly relieved to be away from the scene.

  Poor, poor Nicholas. He had lost his way completely and there seemed nothing we could do but wait for Evensong to observe his ultimate destruction. My greatest concern was for the disillusionment of the pilgrim children. It was obvious that, despite the terrible suffering and hardship and the deaths they had witnessed all around them, those that remained still believed that on this very night they would begin the second half of their journey along the shining path to the Holy Land, that the glorious Redeemer would supply a full moon on a near moonless night to light the way across the sea and all the way to the gates of Jerusalem.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon giving dying children the final unction. They had managed to get this far and in their minds they believed they had almost reached Jerusalem. Those who still had the strength begged to be saved so that they might complete the journey. Brothers Bruno and Aloysius were strong men, but many times that afternoon they broke down in tears at the pathetic little bundle of bones they were sending on their way to heaven.

  The bells of the Holy Cross Church that looked over the harbour pealed Evensong and we made our way back to where Nicholas was preparing to preach. Children, most of them barefoot and all of them in rags, parted respectfully at our approach, many calling out the glad tiding of their imminent departure and asking if I would sing. The tide had come in and the fishing boat now floated in about an arm’s length of water, still sufficiently close to the shore for Nicholas to preach to the children.

  Nicholas stood on the deck in his green monk’s habit with the hood pulled over his head so that his face was in shadow, behind him a magnificent Genoese sunset splashed across the western sky, the harbour surface burnished with gold. A child trumpeter of considerable expertise, who I had not previously heard, stood beside him and blew a series of beautiful notes to bring the excited children to silence. Then the child jumped into the water up to his waist and waded to the shore. This was the water that all the children present, except perhaps for the healing angels in our own little group, expected would soon become a shining path where they would walk with dry feet across the surface of the sea.

  Nicholas began to preach, repeating the sermon he had given on our departure from Cologne where God parted the Red Sea for the escaping Israelites. He had lost none of his power and soon captured the imagination of the enraptured children, who for a short while seemed to forget their hunger and suffering, enchanted with his wonderful words. They groaned as the Egyptians approached, closer and closer to Moses and his fleeing Israelites, some of the smaller children fearfully covering their eyes with dirty little hands as if they couldn’t bear to witness what might happen next. They cheered when God’s hand emerged from the clouds to touch the towering waves and cause them to resume in a crash of thunder and foam down onto the hapless Egyptian chariots. They wept at the escape of the crippled shepherd boy. This was a story that was about to involve the same God acting on behalf of the Children’s Crusade, though this time Nicholas, their Moses, promised that the giant forefinger of the Creator would draw a line across the ocean to make a path for them. They gazed enraptured up into the golden heavens expecting the miracle of God’s forefinger at any moment.

  Nicholas came to the end of his sermon by which time the sun had almost set and, indeed, a path of gold where its rays focused down on the opening to the harbour appeared to make a clean and perfect shining path across the sea. A single shaft of light carried from the dying sun into the golden shine of water became in their minds the finger of God. To these children, who had never seen the sun set over a shoreless expanse of ocean, the miracle seemed intact. They watched, shouting and weeping to the glory of God, as Nicholas stepped from the deck of the boat and dropped with a loud splash into the harbour.

  That was the last time I was to see Nicholas. We tried in vain to get to him, but the crush of weeping and wailing children was impossible to navigate. They bumped and ran into each other and into our own terrified children, some tore the rags from their emaciated bodies, others fell onto the sand pushing handfuls into their mouths, some were screaming and clawing at their eyes and scratching open the festering sores on their arms and legs. Children around us threw fits or simply perished, their hearts failing from the shock. It became impossible to get near to where Nicholas of Cologne had ended the Children’s Crusade in a splash of dirty harbour water. Almost as he’d entered the water the setting sun dipped behind the rim of the ocean and the shining path disappeared. To those children who may have been watching it must have seemed as if God had changed His mind and cancelled the Children’s Crusade.

  In all the mayhem and despair that followed, our own children needed to be protected. They too had been carried away by Nicholas’s charismatic preaching and, despite being told that there would be no shining path across the sea, most had believed Nicholas to the very end.

  So we made our departure from the harbour with many of the smaller members of the Silent Choir of God’s Little Children weeping and greatly distressed. We walked into the gathering dark and then on into the moonless night, until our children could go no further. We stopped beside a field of cabbages on the outskirts of the city where the children fell almost where they stood and slept the sleep of the dead.

  I made my way still further into the dark field until I knew I was beyond earshot. Then I sat among the cabbages and wailed and wailed, but no tears would come. Although my heart had been broken, I knew I had long since spent my lifetime allotment of tears. I am ashamed to say that at one stage I removed the dagger from Father John’s stave and thought to use it on myself. But I heard his voice clearly in my mind, although it seemed a hundred years ago since I’d walked to the Monastery of St Thomas and traded my hens to the mean-spirited kitchen monk and my father’s carpentry tools to the lovely Father John. ‘Each time you use it, when you place it back, you must pray to our Saviour and thank Him for protecting your life.’ He had blessed this knife with holy water and so I knew it would be committing a terrible blasphemy to use it to end my own life. ‘You don’t even have permission to kill yourself!’ I wailed, then I stabbed a cabbage again and again and when I’d killed it several times by stabbing it in the heart, I went onto my knees and started to pray. I begged God to punish me, knowing that I could never, in what remained of my worthless life, do sufficient penance for the untold misery I had helped to bring about. Then in the cold dawn light I promised my precious Lord and Saviour that I would spend my life protecting His little children.

  As the glorious sun rose, and still on my knees, I finally had the courage and the temerity to ask Him for a miracle of my own, a miracle that I could never doubt was from the Father of Heaven Himself. I asked Him to increase my allotment of tears.

  It was here that Reinh
ardt found me and lifted me to my feet. I was cramped and sore from kneeling. ‘Look at you, Sylvia Honeyeater! Your knees are caked with mud and your nice nun’s habit soiled, there’s mud on your boots and, if you’ll excuse my French, your eyes, my dear, look like piss holes in the snow!’

  I laughed, despite myself. He’d taken a battering on the road and his many-coloured tunic was faded and torn, his hose possessed more holes than yarn and his broken boots clung to his feet as if by some magic trick. His once splendid cap flopped forlornly over one ear but, as if by some miracle, the ridiculous peacock feather remained almost pristine, the morning sunlight catching its brilliant colours. I kissed him on the cheek. ‘I love you, ratcatcher,’ I said quietly.

  He touched his cheek where I’d kissed him. ‘Goodness! My goodness!’ I could see he was close to tears. ‘Come, Sylvia, we must hasten to Rome. The Pope mustn’t be kept waiting to hear the finest children’s choir in the world, not to mention the glorious lead singer and, of course, the flautist, a truly exceptional talent.’ His eyes suddenly shot open in surprise. ‘Sylvia, what on earth did you do to that poor cabbage?’

  It would not be normal practice in the twelfth century to permit a lay person to sing in church or during mass. If Sylvia’s voice was exceptional she may have received a special dispensation from the archbishop, and I have assumed this to be the case. Furthermore, this is a work of fiction and, while it is woven around known events and people, it may contain inaccuracies regarding church practices and life in the twelfth century. In writing this story I have attempted to capture the essence of what we now know as ‘medieval times’.

  Bryce Courtenay

  Acknowledgements

  At the conclusion of a new book I often wish that, like the characters in a novel, I could allow my reader to know more about the people who help to make a story happen. The author’s mind is the engine, but each chapter is a carriage and each carriage is filled with what other people know and generously allow the engine driver to use. To each of you who helped me write Sylvia, some in small ways, others hugely, my heartfelt thanks.