The door burst open, and six knights charged into the house, shouting. Godfrey bowed as his guests stood. “Welcome. How can we serve you?”
A Templar spat. He looked at the empty places. “Where are they?” he roared. “We’re told of a one-eyed man and an old priest with a knight and a company of youths. A peddler claims he saw them here!”
Godfrey nodded. “Indeed, sir. Indeed they were. I thought them to be pilgrims in need.”
The knight kicked at a hound. “Where are they?” he growled.
“Ah, good sir. They left us, oh, perhaps an hour ago or more.”
Another soldier looked at the perspiring guests suspiciously. He looked at the plates, still partly filled with food. “Why would they leave their food behind?”
Godfrey faltered. The Templar stuck his finger in a sausage. “Still warm!” he cried. “Search the house!”
Wil, Heinrich, Alwin, and the others ran desperately across the merchant’s rear courtyard and into his small stable. There they feverishly gathered their provisions and dragged Paulus into the alleyway. Behind them they could hear shouts and breaking glass. “Hurry!” cried Wil. “Hurry!”
The desperate company followed the merchant’s servant down the winding descent of the town’s streets until he pointed them to Marburg’s eastern wall. “There, through that gate. Godspeed!” he cried.
The pilgrims flew from the town and dashed across an open field toward the cover of a wooded slope. Maria dragged Paulus, and Wil and Tomas carried Pieter until they all crashed headlong into a thicket. Tripping and collapsing into their cover, the company abruptly spun about to see if they were being followed.
“Can you see?” asked Frieda. “Wil, can you see?”
Wil studied every horse, rider, cart, and peasant leaving the town gate. He turned his face to the roadway, to the riverbanks, and he stared at the many folks feasting outside the walls. “No. I don’t see them.”
Heinrich counted everyone, then checked their provisions. “We should have left Paulus behind. It was foolish.”
“No!” snapped Maria. She wrapped her arm around the donkey’s long face. “No. They might have killed him. And… and Pieter needs him.”
Heinrich nodded. “Well, ‘tis a miracle we were not seen running with him. If they had been on the walls, they would have seen us for sure.”
“Godfrey must have delayed them,” said Alwin. “He’s like a fox when he needs to be.”
Frieda thought she heard the cry of gulls. She looked up. “Wil, we must keep moving.”
The company stumbled northwestward all that day. With anxious eyes cast behind them, they pressed deep into the twilight darkness. No longer following the Lahn, they traveled on the starlit highway leading to Kassei. The next day they moved off the roadway and paralleled it at a safe distance, keeping a sharp eye on those passing by. The road was crowded with summer traffic—peddlers, pilgrims, clerics, caravans, and men-at-arms—but they did not see the white robes of Templars all that day or the next.
They continued their journey through a widening landscape decorated with yellow and purple wildflowers sprinkled generously in the clearings between stands of beech and spruce. It was here that Maria pranced happily once more. She gathered enough summer blooms to decorate the hair of the three women and then presented a ringlet of vines for Pieter’s white head.
The column crossed the Eder River at Fritzlar and then began a rolling march through a knotty landscape that delivered the travelers to the outskirts of Kassei.
“They have not trailed us, Alwin,” offered Heinrich. “We’ve seen nothing of them for almost a week. They would have no way of knowing which way we went from Marburg. “
The knight knew the discipline of the Templar Order, and he was still anxious. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I just don’t know.”
Wil ordered the night’s camp be set, and soon the fugitives were resting uncomfortably around a small fire. “My beloved,” Pieter began slowly. He coughed weakly. “I know a cloister near these parts. I think you ought to leave me there. I am now a danger to you all. I slow you. My time is nearly come.”
Maria began to sob softly. She snuggled against the bony man’s frame like a kitten nestling into a safe place.
“No,” stated Wil flatly. “Pieter, we are safe enough here. They are not following us any longer. We need you, Pieter. We still need you.”
Pieter took a shallow breath. He did not have the energy to argue. The last five days had been grueling, and he wanted nothing other than to sleep. He nodded and closed his eyes. Soon, midst the gentle chatter of the others, he fell to sleep. Lying in the firelight with a slight smile on his face, the old man was quickly carried to pleasant places on the wings of dreams.