Pilgrims of Promise(126)

With a sigh, he turned his eyes toward the smoky nook in which Weyer was nestled. The village was crowded and busy. “We need to find Arnold’s cottage.”

The group hurried down the steep descent past chatting peasants, a team of oxen, and a peddler’s cart until they faced a short row of hovels set against a fence. Tomas immediately pointed to a sturdy cottage with a moss-green barrel by its door. “There! That’d be Arnold’s!”

Nearly running to the open door, Frieda arrived first. “Sir? Herr Arnold?”

A narrow-faced, thin old man rose from a stool upon which he had been dozing deep within the shade of his thatch. “Eh? Who calls m’name?” He rubbed his eyes and stepped to the doorway to gawk at the company standing before him. “Tomas?”

“Ja. I’ve come home.”

Pieter stepped forward. “I, sir, am Pieter, wandering priest and servant of these friends.”

Arnold spat and waved them off with a mumbled blasphemy.

“Herr Arnold!” cried Frieda. “You are my husband’s great-uncle!”

The man stared at the young woman, then stepped slowly out of his house. Frieda trembled, waiting nervously. The man’s taut face was hard as iron, and his skin clung to his bones like wet leather wrapped around an old oak. He was lean and gray, and his face was etched with the bitterness of broken dreams. Approaching sixty, the man had bettered nearly all his foes by ruthless cunning, but he had been soured by the vanity lately discovered in such vacant conquest. “Who are you?”

“I am Frieda, wife of Wilhelm … son of Heinrich the baker.”

Arnold said nothing for a long moment. He studied each face before him. He looked at the minstrel. “And who are you, little mouse?”

“I am Benedetto, troubadour and friend to these.”

“And you?”

“I am Friederich of… of… well, I don’t know where I am from.”

Arnold laughed. “I like that,” he said. “A plain-speaking lad. And you, old man, you say you’re a priest. I tell you this: I don’t like priests or shavelings of any sort. They are all deceivers, liars, and pretenders.”

Pieter smiled. He had already judged Arnold to be a cantankerous old devil, but he sensed the man had a keen understanding of the world as it oft was. “Not all, sir, but some, to be sure.”

Arnold grunted. “They walk with bowed heads as if they be humble, yet they do not walk at all—they strut!”

Pieter laughed out loud. “Aye, I’ve seen it m’self! Some only pretend to be forgiven, for they pretend they are sinners!”

“Ha! Good one, old man. I like that one. I shall remember it. Now, why are you here?”

Pieter proceeded to tell Arnold much the man already knew. Arnold listened carefully, feigning ignorance while attempting to discern the hearts of the group now gathered around his table. He asked them of their journey and of their trials, of their present wishes and their fears. At last, he poured them each a generous tankard of warm beer and tore apart a large loaf of wheat bread. “What do you know of my son, Richard?”

Pieter thought for a long moment. “Is he the cousin who traveled with Heinrich to the north?”

“He is.”

The man leaned forward. Pieter took a long draught and set his tankard down. “Heinrich told me that his cousin was killed in combat with the knight who crippled him as a youth. I am sorry.”

Arnold’s eyes misted and he turned away. He rose from his table and went to a small window facing the sheepfold to the rear. The room was quiet as the old man absorbed the news. At last, he returned to the table and sat down again. He poured himself another tankard of beer. “Was his death avenged?”

Pieter nodded. “It was, sir. Your nephew buried your son’s killer in a heap of dung.”

The answer satisfied Arnold. “Good man, that Heinrich, though sometimes I thought him to be too soft, like his mother. My boy, Richard, was spirited like his grandfather and me. ‘Tis fitting he fell fighting.” He took a drink. “I fear his children are perished as well. Have you news of them?”

“No,” said Frieda quietly. “Some of us are still finding our way home.”

Arnold nodded sadly. “A brave thing, that crusade of yours. Foolish, methinks, but brave enough. My son Roland said he had talked to his children—but they said the visions of others was proof enough. They left and have not come back. So now it is only me, Roland, and his terrible wife, Elsbeth. ‘Tis all the kin I’ve left except for Heinrich. Once our family was strong and growing. We kept the code of our forefathers and their cause as well. It was a different time then, and I think I was a different man.”