At last, blood began to ooze more generously from the lad’s wounds, and Pieter shouted for joy. The children now believed he had truly lost his mind. He rolled Wil to his back and listened to a heart beating very, very weakly. “God be praised!” shouted the old man. “Now, where’s m’thread?”
At that moment, all heads spun about to see three of their fellows sprinting wildly across the rocks, racing away from a shouting guildsman chasing them with a brandished knife. At once Heinrich jumped to his feet and drew his dagger. He moved toward the man as the imps scampered past him with a handful of supplies.
“Father Pieter!” cried Ava as she fell at the priest’s feet panting. She proudly opened her palm and presented Pieter with two thin needles, both slightly arced.
“Perfect!” cried Pieter.
Heinz arrived next with a ball of thread and a smile as wide as the blue horizon. “Thread!” he boasted.
“Aye, lad, well done!”
The third comrade presented a stout candle and an armload of cloth. He handed Pieter his treasure with a nervous glance backward.
Meanwhile, Heinrich held the cursing sailmaker at bay with the point of his long dagger. “Hear me, whether you understand me or not!”
The man growled. “Ladro!”
Heinrich nodded. “Aye, take this.” He tilted his head toward his satchel and motioned for the man to back away. When the man had taken several steps backward, Heinrich put the dagger in his teeth and plunged his hand into his coin pouch. He produced five silver pennies and tossed them to the grumbling fellow.
The sailmaker picked up his pennies and narrowed his gaze at the broad-shouldered, shaggy German’s menacing appearance and glistening dagger. Deciding he’d be better off not pressing the matter, he turned away, leaving a string of blasphemies in his wake.
By now Pieter was working furiously over the unconscious Wil. Surrounded by nearly two score of gawking onlookers, he barked orders to many. “You boys … build us a fire there.” He tossed his head toward an empty field about two bowshots south. “You four, tear this cloth into strips. You, Otto!”
“Aye, sir.”
“Scour the shore for anything we might use for a night’s camp; then take a counting of our company.”
Heinrich hurried to Pieter’s side. “Shall he live?”
The old man looked up with a resolute expression. “Ja! Somehow I can feel it! Now help me press cloth into these wounds till I sew them.”
The baker nodded and took hold of a handful of bandages that he pressed firmly on Wil’s most severe wounds. “Ah, dear boy, you must fight!” He turned toward Pieter, whose fingers were nimbly dragging thread across the wax candles. “I’ve not yet seen Karl. I fear the worst.”
Pieter looked up sadly. “I’ve not time now, Heinrich. We must save this one.” The old man wondered why Heinrich made no query of Maria.
It was two hours of careful stitching before Pieter released a heavy sigh. Wil had narrowly escaped the attempted butchery of the San Marco’s evil crew, but whether he’d survive his wounds was yet to be known. The late September sky was darkening quickly, and word of the crusaders’ presence had drawn s more children to the southern end of Genoa where Pieter’s camp was now forming around a large driftwood fire. Wil was carried carefully to the fire’s edge, and Pieter attended him anxiously with Heinrich close by his side.
Though Wil’s future still teetered in the balance of destiny, Otto bore despairing news of the others. Four fellow crusaders had perished, including Gertrude and Conrad, whose bodies had washed ashore with the evening tide. According to Otto’s count, of those who had followed Wil into Genoa, only eleven had survived. But now, this company added to the other young crusaders numbered more than three score and was growing.
Searching the young faces by firelight for any sign of Karl, Heinrich had come to his own conclusions when he confronted Pieter once more. “Father, I beg you. Tell me of Karl.” Etched in shadow, Heinrich’s face was drawn in grief.
Pieter nodded and bathed Wil’s bandaged wounds with another cup of salt water.
“Did you hear me, Pieter?”
“Ja, my friend.” The priest stood, took a long, trembling breath, and faced the anxious man tenderly. “Dear Friend, your good son is with the angels.”
Heinrich closed his eye and struggled to breathe. He groaned, then staggered backward with an anguished cry. Pieter stretched a tender hand toward the grief-stricken wretch and prayed for him quietly. “And Maria was left with the good brothers in Arona.”
The baker mumbled a few incoherent words, then retreated into the darkness, sobbing. He left the light of the campfire far behind as he hurried angrily along the turbulent shoreline. Alone under a magnificent night’s sky, he paused to stare at the silvery silk of the water’s surface as his gaze blurred behind a curtain of tears.