The two stared at each other, then smiled in understanding. Their eyes assured them that hope had been restored. After a final prayer, the priest stood, bade Frieda an affectionate farewell, and walked to the others, whom he blessed. All things in proper order, Pieter, Solomon, Otto, and Heinz then boarded a small craft manned by two monks who would row them to Camogli and the perilous highways leading north.
Fair Frieda had been born nearly sixteen years prior in the region of Westphalia that was once called the Lower Lorraine. She had kept her past a secret from her fellow travelers, though Gertrude had made comments from time to time that gave Pieter cause to wonder. Were the truth known, she’d have been relieved of a deep shame, one foisted upon her by circumstances for which she had no part.
The young woman had been born to a knight, Manfred of Chapelle, a landed vassal to Lord Rawdon of Bonn. Her father’s modest manor consisted of some one thousand hectares that lay near the Rhine about three leagues from Adernach. Her mother, Clarimond, was the ravishing daughter of Lord Eginhard of Metz and boasted an ancient lineage of knightly sires. So by all counts, the young lady should have enjoyed a genteel life of privilege.
Unfortunately, Manfred was the firstborn of a marriage between first cousins—a union that had supported a necessary military alliance but violated the Church’s standard. The man, like two of his seven siblings, had gone mad three years prior and had been taken to an undisclosed asylum somewhere in the marshes of Bohemia. His manor house and lands had been forfeited to his overlord and his family immediately deprived of its income.
Frieda loved her father, and she wept bitterly the day she watched him taken away. Her priest had told her it would be better for him to spend his days in some unknown cell than to be set loose in the world and that the family’s overlord was owed a debt of gratitude. But when Clarimond and her children were presented to the haughty Lord Rawdon, Frieda slapped the man’s outstretched hand and stormed away.
Were these not troubles enough, Clarimond, desperate to find some source of funds, then unwisely loaned her dowry to a well-intended uncle in Münster whose reputation for wagering was quickly proven to have little to do with his actual skill. After promising much, the downcast man could do no more than offer empty promises of better fortune and fill Clarimond’s strongbox with scraps of payments due. Unable to pay her rents, she and her three children were eventually delivered penniless to the streets of Bonn.
Clarimond finally determined that God was demanding she yield her life to his service. She took her vows in a double monastery near Treves into which she placed her children as oblates. The experience proved immediately difficult for Frieda and her siblings. Frieda had caught the carnal eye of the bishop, who made every effort to override the protections of the abbess. The damsel was desperate to escape, and when rumors of a children’s crusade found her ears, she conceived a daring plan to rescue her sister, her brother, and herself.
And so, Frieda, Gertrude, and brother Manfred escaped their plight to join the hapless crusade that had left Frieda as the sole survivor. Now the young woman was alone in the world, bearing the stigma of a mad father and a penniless mother. Reduced to the status of a peasant and with no place to call her home, she had maintained both her dignity and her belief that things would, even yet, be put to right.
It was Martinmas when Frieda wrapped herself warmly in an ample woolen blanket under the shelter of the monks’ stone arcade. She stared peacefully at the bay now spattered by a cold rain. She had enjoyed a pleasant feast of roast pork and chicken stew. Flat fish had been provided, of course, as well as a large platter of shellfish and ample vegetables. But her thoughts were not of her plenty. Rather she was lost in memories of Gertrude and Manfred when a sound startled her.
The young woman spun about. Her eyes suddenly lit the dreary arcade, and she clapped excitedly. “Wil! Wil! You’re walking without a crutch!”
The lad blushed and tossed his hair to one side. He wanted to cover his scar. “Ja, ‘tis true. I swore to the infirmer on All Saints’ that I’d surprise you before Martinmas!”
Frieda lightly brushed the hair away from his wound. She touched his cheek lightly, running her finger along the raised ridge. “I am proud of your scar, and you should be as well.”
Wil looked down, shamefaced. “I … I saw it in still water some time back, and it made me sick. It forever changes me.”
The damsel shook her head. “Tis not the scar that has changed you, Wil.”
Wil turned away, embarrassed.
Frieda laid a hand tenderly on his shoulder. “You believed in the love of others. Then you fought for us like no knight I have ever seen. Those men … oh, those men were fearsome, but you held them at bay … you freed me from one’s grip. I remember well.”