Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade (The Journey of Souls Series)

by C. D. Baker

  Priests walked quietly along the rows of fidgeting footmen and climbed slowly up the long ladders to the ramparts, muttering their prayers and comforting the frightened amid the cries of waking infants and crows of roosting fowl.

  The spotters in the towers had barely time to warn their comrades when balls of fire suddenly scorched through the pink morning sky and sailed over the walls, splashing onto the helpless courtyard below. Amid screams and oaths, trumpets and bells, the castle became as a living thing. The storm had begun.

  “Water pails! More water! Here … form your lines here, you idiots! Move!” Hooded peasant men quickly yielded to the orders of their officers and raced to and fro in a scramble to douse the fires now bursting in all corners of the bailey. They passed one sloshing bucket after the other down long columns of grasping hands and threw them on flaming thatch and timber. Smoke filled the castle grounds.

  Pieter and his boys watched open-mouthed as the long, fiery tails of the fireballs streaked overhead. Sebastiani heard his captain’s command and wished Pieter a hasty, “Godspeed.” He ran several paces but stopped suddenly and raced back to Pieter. “Here, take this crossbow, Padre. The boys may not be yet men enough but I’ve a sense you’ve the stomach to pull the trigger. It is loaded with a good bolt but have a care … I wish you and these boys to be standing when the day is done!” With that, Sebastiani turned and disappeared with a troop of his comrades into the battlements above.

  The barrage of fire seemed endless. Ball after ball roared high over the walls like rushing winds, and they fell like large raindrops pelting the dust on a summer’s day. The exhausted peasants worked valiantly to extinguish the flames with little regard for the danger plummeting toward them from above. And many fell prey to the fiery assault. One after another was caught by the sticky incendiary and many died screaming as they blackened in the merciless flames consuming them.

  Wil tore his eyes away from the hellish scene and hid his face in an archer’s peephole. Try as he might, however, he could not escape the terror now pulsing through his veins. At the edge of the fortress’ list he saw six large catapults launching their Greek Fire. They seemed like living monsters to the lad, lustily heaving their long arms forward and grunting at each release. But Wil’s mouth dried when he took notice of the thick infantry now crowding forward. They assembled in some order, though to Wil’s eye they were but a horrible brown horde. Their heads and shoulders were protected by long mail hoods and their bodies covered with thick leather jerkins. They fell into their waving lines impatiently, frustrated by the restraint expected of them. He thought them to be like salivating wolves.

  Suddenly, the boys felt the earth shake.

  “What is that?” shrieked Jon.

  “What do you see?” Karl screamed.

  Wil said nothing but fell away from his loophole white-faced and drawn.

  Karl flew to the hole. “Oh, dear Mother Maria! We’ll all die this day.”

  Conrad pushed him aside to see for himself. The massed Visconti footmen had begun their advance toward the castle walls, stamping their feet and beating their wooden shields. Behind them, mail-clad knights followed up the slope, their mounts snorting and straining in hopes of breaching the moat-bridge. To the rear advanced rows and rows of archers ordering themselves in proper position to launch their arrows and bolts against the parapeted defenders and those within.

  But inside the castle a steady, calming voice suddenly rose over the din of the attacking host. “Signore Gostanzo!” exclaimed Conrad.

  High on the southeast corner tower stood the lord of the castle, quieting his soldiers and laughing at his foes. His green-and-red cape fluttered lightly along his broad shoulders and the rising sun gleamed against his silver armor. With a defiant smile on his face, he raised an arm and signaled to a sergeant to remove a large tarp from a weapon mounted high on the tower. His soldiers cheered at the sight. “A ballista!” one bellowed.

  The advancing infantry slowed slightly and glanced upward at the weapon staring down on them. It was a quick-loading catapult armed with buckets of rocks. In that brief moment of hesitation, Signore Gostanzo ordered the ballista to be sprung. With a loud snap the weapon released, sending a spreading arsenal of rock and of iron hurtling toward their marks. The center of the Visconti line immediately collapsed and backed away in confusion as dozens of men fell dead or wounded on the list. The castle defenders cheered wildly as the large cranks of the ballista reset another launching.

  Undaunted, the Visconti commander abruptly regained control of his surprised infantry and ordered his soldiers forward again. And on they came, screaming and shrieking as wild demons about to ravage a dying soul.

  “Wil, this just cannot be!” Conrad moaned.

  Wil swallowed hard and set his jaw. “Nothing to fear, nothing at all. Now be a man!” he snapped.

  Pieter was in the dirt, praying desperately for his flock while terror crept over his cold, sweating skin. He pulled himself to quaking feet and put a gentle hand on Conrad. “Good lad, stand easy.”

  “They’re coming with ladders!” cried Karl. “Ladders! And the archers are loading; catapults, too!”

  The second line of charging infantry had picked up long ladders lying at their feet and they now stormed to the edge of the moat under a hail of rock and arrow. Triple rows of Visconti archers in the rear quickly knelt as they readied to release more cover for the ladder companies. The fore row then launched a forest of arrows from their longbows over the ramparts and toward the bailey. The middle and far rows then followed with volleys of bolts from their crossbows aimed at the defenders in the balconies and atop the wall.

  But the defenders answered well. Shaft and bolt now flew from the ramparts like the heavy rain of a summer torrent. And all the while the ballista sent its deadly deluge as quickly as its handlers could load and release its barrels of rock.

  Wil and his comrades waited apprehensively for their baskets to be dropped for filling. “Here! Here’s the first basket, Karl! Take it to the supply cart and fill it! Quickly!”

  The boys scrambled to the armory’s barrels and then all across the courtyard to collect enemy arrows and hoist them to the archers on the wall. “Quickly, Karl!” urged Wil. “Quickly load this basket. Faster, Conrad. Faster! Move!”

  Pieter was scampering about helping this one, then that. He yelled to Wil, “Watch and listen for the rhythm of the arrows … pay attention to the rhythm! Keep the boys against the wall until the rhythm is right. Send them after … just after a volley lands.” Pieter wrung his hands. “Oh, dear God … Jon, Jon almost took one in the back. Wil, I said watch the rhythm!”

  But as with all plans of men, Wil’s would not be executed perfectly. Karl was sent in good time but tripped on his return. All froze as the boy stumbled wide-eyed toward his comrades at the wall’s base. Suddenly the sky above filled with a blur of shafts arcing toward the courtyard—and defenseless Karl. Pieter closed his eyes.

  Some glorious instinct in the boy quickly felled him to the ground and bundled him in a tight ball. And, though the deadly darts fell near, none as much as brushed the lad’s garments! “Praise God!” shouted Pieter. “Praise His blessed name. Now up, boy, up!” The old man ran toward the relieved Karl and the two returned to the safety of the wall and the hearty welcome of the others.

  Karl bent over to catch his breath for just a moment and a smile began to cross his face, when suddenly several bodies of soldiers above came crashing down around the group, landing with sickening, heavy thuds. Karl’s smile disappeared and the boy’s face whitened. He stepped over the crumpled corpse of one young soldier and stared at the bolt-end protruding from the man’s helmet.

  This was no time for reflection and Wil broke the pause. “Karl… Conrad … Jon … more arrows. They’re in need of us.”

  Conrad was shaking. “I… I cannot move … I…”

  Wil slapped him hard across his face as another body, then another, fell from the wall. “Y’must, Conrad!” barked
Wil. “You must or more’ll be landing.” He grabbed the frightened boy by his hair and practically threw him into the courtyard toward a mass of arrows sticking in the dirt.

  A foot sergeant raced past Karl and snatched him by the neck. He screamed in the lad’s face, “Bambino! Stay in the middle and load that cart with incoming bolts … no more hiding by this wall or I’ll cut you myself! And you there,” he yelled, pointing to Wil. “You stay in the center as well… fill these baskets and stop hiding or, by God, I’ll strike you down. You, black-haired boy. Stand by there and hoist these ropes.”

  The boys could not understand the soldier and raced for cover as the next volley was surely due. Pieter fell over a burnt corpse and in the nausea of that horrid moment failed to notice the next barrage of incoming arrows. When he heard their deadly rush it was too late. He rose to his feet and stood in quiet submission to the moment, like the lord’s marble statue facing him just ten paces away. He closed his eyes and felt the air of the missiles brush him on all sides. The statue cracked in two but the priest was miraculously unharmed. He looked at the deadly spikes piercing the dirt around his feet and gulped a thank-you heavenward.

  Arrows and bolts flew past prime, then past terce, and by sext the sun burned hot above the unyielding waves of infantry stubbornly assaulting the weary citadel. The list was littered with dead and the blood-red moat was now clogged with floating bodies. It seemed to some a bridge of corpses might be the Visconti’s ghastly plan.

  Inside, the exhausted serfs were doing their best to support the soldiers, but many, many, lay dead in the smoke-filled courtyard, pierced by falling arrows or burnt beyond all recognition by the incendiaries. While the young gathered arrows or hoisted fresh oil to the balconies above, old men carried the wounded to the infirmary where Gabriella and her girls worked feverishly.

  “Gertrude!” cried Frieda. “Gertrude, help me hold this man.” The two girls dutifully sprawled across a young soldier’s heaving chest. The man’s left arm had been crushed by a bolt from a Visconti crossbow and he was bleeding badly. The surgeon approached with his razor-edged broadax and severed the arm from the shoulder with one mighty stroke. As the heavy ax landed on the wooden table, Gertrude vomited. Frieda paled but did not retch until the surgeon seared the bloody stump with the flat of a heated sword.

  The straw covering the infirmary’s stone floor was now red and so sopped in congealing blood that walking was difficult. And with each new casualty blood spewed all the more, making it nearly impossible for Heinz to fetch clean straw quickly enough.

  Along the room’s dank walls, dozens now lay whimpering and moaning, many writhing in pain from their burns. The stench was often more than the children could bear, but Frieda, Maria, Anna, Gertrude, Heinz, and the rest faced the horror with such stout hearts and selfless compassion as would swell the chests of the angels surely standing near.

  On the towers it had become clear that the Visconti strategy was not to penetrate the gate but rather to overwhelm the walls with a horde of infantry. And, once inside, the gates might then be seized and the bridge lowered, undamaged, for the horsemen. And so the enemy’s infantry pressed up their ladders on all sides, dying by scores but surging ever closer to the fatigued battlements above them.

  Pieter stayed close by Karl and Wil in the dangerous courtyard center, gathering fallen arrows and placing them in baskets which Jon and Conrad hoisted to the archers. Suddenly, shouts of panic from the lesser-manned western wall could be heard above the din. It had been breached!

  The sight of brown jerkins leaping through the gapped ramparts seized Pieter’s chest. He had seen this before: first one, then another, followed by whole companies rushing across the wall-walk massacring the defenders. The western wall? thought Pieter. But how?

  Signore Gostanzo’s knights rapidly assembled a formidable standing defense in the castle bailey and prepared a counter assault. As they were aligning their heavy-armored rows Signore Gostanzo ordered his north-wall archers to turn and fire into the brown mass growing atop the western battlements. It was as Pieter feared. At the same time, Gostanzo sent a company of marksmen to the top of the keep at the castle’s center where the courtyard could be defended in all directions.

  With neither hesitation nor confusion the veteran bowmen drew their strings and, on command, shot volley after volley into the surging mass of invaders now clambering over the wall. Scores fell, dropping like acorns in October. But on they came, nonetheless, pouring over the walls like a floodtide.

  Signore Gostanzo raced to join his knights and led them in a furious charge across the courtyard toward the Visconti and their mercenaries now massing at the base of the far wall. He swung his huge mace high over his head and was the first to crash into the Visconti’s opposing wave. He bashed and hammered a swath through the invaders, splitting heads with a single blow and pounding screaming men hard to the earth.

  Inspired by the courage of their lord, the veteran knights fought ever harder, some bearing mighty broad-axes, others pikes or long swords or broad-billed halberds. They ploughed into their adversaries without mercy.

  But above the bailey the enemy continued to press. More parapets were breached, some now on the south wall, providing reinforcements to those warring on the castle grounds. The fighting had so changed that Pieter and his boys were no longer able to retrieve missiles, and they huddled against the safety of a corner wall and simply gaped at the slaughter all around them. Bodies of both armies now rained from above, landing at their feet like large sacks of turnips. The crumpling sound of broken bone and smashed metal sickened Karl. “Pieter,” he pleaded, “Pieter, please pray this ends!”

  Suddenly, two enemy soldiers spotted the crusaders and charged toward them through a thick cloud of smoke. Pieter’s sharp eyes caught them and old instincts surged within him. He snapped his crossbow to his shoulder, took quick aim and, without the slightest hesitation, pulled the trigger. One of the men staggered and clutched the bolt puncturing his throat before dropping dead to the ground. But the other kept coming, eyes fixed on Wil.

  The boy stood frozen … for just an instant; too frightened to think, too surprised to feel fear until terror finally rushed over him like the iced water of the Rhône. His bulging eyes blurred; his belly cramped; his limbs tingled. He watched helplessly as the soldier shrieked toward him until, at last, Wil lurched away as if to run. But his legs felt heavy and try as he might he could barely lift them. He took but a few slow steps before stumbling headlong over a broken wheel.

  The attacker cackled a ghoulish laugh as he raised his blood-stained ax over the terrified lad. Piercing the air with a devilish cry, he swung with all his might.

  Something within the boy suddenly quickened him, however, and he deftly dodged the blade as he scrambled upright. His enraged foe pursued him, swinging wildly until Wil was backed against the heat of a burning cart and could move no more. He began to weep and begged for mercy. But this was no ordinary footman, no poor peasant pressed into the service of a greedy lord; this was a routier and he was about the business of dispatching souls. There would be no quarter.

  Yet all the while Wil was not abandoned to his peril. Pieter, Karl, and the others were frantically trying to reload the old man’s crossbow. “Oh, God, hurry! Pieter… hurry!” Karl shouted.

  In his haste Pieter’s feeble fingers had dropped his bolt not once, not twice, but three times. A frantic, frustrated Karl plucked it from the dirt and jammed it in its channel again. “Pull the cord, all.” Conrad and Karl strained to secure the bow’s string into its lock … a task often difficult for even the large forearms of veteran archers.

  Meanwhile, the routier was delighting in the pleading eyes of his yellow-haired quarry and feigned a swipe at the trembling boy. Wil shrieked and fell backward, closer to the fire behind him. The man raised his ax once more.

  Wil, however, suddenly rallied a bit of mettle from deep within, yanked his dagger from his belt, and pointed it timidly at his foe. And seeing its blade
glisten ever so slightly in the afternoon sun, he felt suddenly safer—even a bit bold. His jaw clenched, his eyes cleared, and he managed a defiant glare at his amused foe.

  The brutish mercenary curled a lip and squinted his eyes. Then, with the skill of a seasoned warrior, he swung a swift blow against the little blade, breaking it in two like a worthless trinket. Wil stared at the useless deer-haired handle clutched in his stinging hand and the last trace of courage drained away. As he collapsed to his knees, he stared up at the rising edge of the routier’s axe and begged for his life.

  But no sooner had the man’s ax reached the top of its arc when he suddenly screamed and fell away, landing hard on the ground like a sack of milled wheat dropped from a wagon. Wil’s jaw dropped as he saw Sebastiani pull a bloody halberd from his enemy’s ribs.

  Wil shuddered and gazed into the lifeless eyes of his would-be executioner as Karl raced toward him. “Wil, Wil, look at me! You’d be safe … and alive!”

  The crusaders retreated to the safety of a shadowy corner where Wil collapsed on the ground. Karl turned toward Pieter. “We’ve needs to reload this bow.”

  “Aye, lad. But I’ve no heart for more … I was certain Wil was dead … I was—”

  “But ‘tis not over yet… we’d all be in danger. I’ve seen others of us by that wall… Richard and—”

  Conrad grabbed the bow. “Ja. Pull!”

  The two boys planted their feet inside the arch of the wide bow and pulled hard, finally fastening the cord in its place. Karl grabbed it and set it against his shoulder. Conrad pointed to Sebastiani. “There he is; protect him.”

  Karl nodded and took aim at the Visconti charging toward the unsuspecting man.

  “Shoot! Shoot!” yelled Conrad.

  Karl began to shake. He closed his eyes.

  “Shoot!” screamed Conrad.