Astonished, Pieter objected loudly.
“Non, old man. Non! Mon Dieux! We’ve heresies all over France! We’ve no need to suffer the spirits of these who have abandoned the faith as well!”
Pieter stood to his feet and shook his crook at them all. “A curse be upon you, imbécile! No faith in all Christendom has withstood such a test. You pitiful dogs are not fit to share your table with them.” He spat, then snatched up his satchel. “We leave you to your crumbs! Come, lads; come Solomon. We’ve better places to be.”
The two boys had not understood the Frenchmen’s words, and Pieter chose to shield them. “Ah, you know those dandies! They think we Teutons to be barbarians and not fit to share their table. Ach, let them gag on their snails and their dainties.”
It was late on the eighth day when the three made camp at the south shore of Lago Maggiore. The night was cold but clear, and the two boys scampered about gathering firewood under the cover of a starry sky. Pieter walked away from the fire and knelt alongside Solomon to pray atop the pebbly shore. From the moment he had left San Fruttuoso, he had thought of little else other than Maria. “Is she alive or with the angels, Solomon?” Now that he was within a half-day’s journey of the answer, he secretly feared what they might find. Oh, that I might see her smile again. He remembered Maria’s innocence, her unsullied charity, and her selflessness. Such a sweet child, he thought. Cursed with deformity yet always giving. His throat swelled, and he faced the dark, lapping waters of the lake sadly. “Another miracle, Karl?” he whispered. “Could there yet be one more?”
“I confess I can barely take another step. My legs are trembling like a sinner at the Judgment.” Pieter paused to stare some three bowshots ahead at the clay rooftops of Arona peeking above its sandstone walls. He swallowed hard against a mouth now dry with fear. His heart fluttered nervously, and he stooped to cup some clean water from Lago Maggiore. “I suppose I should feel comfort if she is with the angels now,” he muttered. “But, by the saints, I pray she is yet here, with us still.”
Otto and Heinz had said little that morning. They stared anxiously at the gray clouds above and at the silhouettes of the haze-shrouded mountains rising in the distance to the north. Heinz skipped a stone across the water. He counted three skips, and then grumbled and threw another. A light rain began to fall, dimpling the lake lightly until a blast of cold wind suddenly scratched the water’s surface. To the boys it seemed like a dark omen.
“Pieter, we buried four by this lake.”
The old man nodded as he lifted his hood over his head. “Aye, lad. One should have been me.”
“And what of Anna?”
“I am chief of all cowards,” moaned Pieter. “I fear for the both of them. Anna was such a quiet child. She asked for little and marched bravely. I can still see her little white head bobbing in the column.” He filled his lungs with a deep breath and released it slowly. “Enough. ‘Tis time to know.” He drove his staff hard into the earth and set his face forward. “Follow, boys, and take heart. What is to be shall be.”
The three said nothing more for a long while as brief gusts of wind rumpled their clothing. None wanted to go on, none wanted know, yet they knew they must. Anna, of course, was beloved to be sure. But Maria had given so much to all of them. It was she who had given them smiles when darkness had nearly overwhelmed them; it was she who would sing in the midst of misery. The little girl was uncommonly blessed with a quiet grace of which she was utterly unaware. She saw only others’ needs and served them with an ineffable wealth of kindness. Maria’s disfigured left arm had provided good sport to her many lessers—most of whom were pleased to believe that God’s judgment had been foisted on the fair child and not themselves. Yet the long-suffering Mädel had returned charity for evil at every turn, saving her tears for secret places.
The three figures and their companion moved quietly along the lakeshore. In the distance they could see the rising foothills of the mighty Alps; behind them, the collapsing landscape leading to the plain from which they had just come.
Just ahead lay Arona, a prosperous town built directly on the edge of the clear lake where wide-hulled fishing boats and tangles of nets lined the stony beach. On Arona’s northern edge was a sheer cliff nearly twenty rods high—“the first Alp,” Pieter had said—and atop it sat the Rocca di Arona, the gray-stone castle of an aging lord.
“I remember the cliff, but not the keep,” said Otto. “The cliff has two eye sockets … it made me think it was the face of a giant!”