Brave Heinrich stood in the first line, nervous and unsure. He breathed quickly and gripped his weapon with fists squeezed white with fear. Behind him and to each side crowded the woollen horde of angry peasants. They chanted and cursed and raised their spears and axes in defiance of the ordered ranks of knights preparing to charge them once again. A long trumpet blasted and the earth began to shake.
Heinrich licked his dry lips and closed his eyes. A warm wind blew through his curly hair, and it felt good as it brushed across his stubbled face. Yearning only for peace, the simple man seemed always beset by strife and disharmony. He had spent his life offered to the bondage of things familiar, yet he was ever pursued by the disrupting purposes of something greater than himself. Persistent, patient, and persevering, truth had labored to stir and prod, to urge and teach until, at last, the poor wretch might be freed to lift his eyes toward the light beyond his own dark world. Now he had been placed in the center of the greatest paradox of all his troubled years.
The mighty warhorses raged closer and closer like a furious tempest bearing down upon a helpless village. The thundering hooves filled Heinrich’s ears with dread, but the man held shoulder to shoulder with his stouthearted comrades. Steely-eyed and bearing all the confidence of their station, the knights crashed into the stubborn line of these lesser men.
With a shout and a lunge, Heinrich entered the whirlwind. All around him swirled the blurred images of horse and knight, the flash of swords and the splatters of blood. The stench of butchered men and slaughtered beasts filled his nose and choked his lungs; his ears were crowded with the thuds and clangs of hammers and steel, the cries of men and the whinnies of stallions lurching about the mêlée. Heinrich jabbed his glaive this way and that, impaling whom he could and dodging others. The man fought well.
But somewhere in the fury Heinrich’s world fell silent. He dropped to the ground gently and closed his eyes as if to sleep. It was then, it seemed, his spirit was lifted like a hawk on the wind far above the bloody plain. Higher and higher he climbed until he felt he was soaring and drifting in the sun’s kind currents. There he sailed and fluttered free, like a butterfly on a summer’s day. His weary heart was glad and he sang with joy as the warmth of the merciful sun bathed his wounded soul. Calmed and steadied, he was touched by hope and returned to his struggle in the world of time.
Chapter 20
A NEW JOURNEY BEGINS
Mein Herr? Mein Herr? Can you hear me?” A gentle, middle-aged woman bent anxiously over the stranger. The fevered man stirred ever so slightly, then returned to a deep, dreamless sleep.
Anna sat back and sighed, then whispered to her daughter-in-law, “He has come and gone from us for a fortnight or more.” She ran her hands through her gray hair and smoothed her apron. “God’s will be done.”
Anna’s young daughter-in-law stood at her side. She was blue-eyed but dark-haired, unlike most of the Stedinger women. Her ancestors were settlers from somewhere near Bruges, a crowded Flemish city in the Low Country north of Normandy. She was willowy and intelligent, strong featured and compassionate. “Mother, he is bound by fits all the night, he calls names and cries aloud. I fear the spirits haunt him.”
“Ja, Edda, I fear the same. Day by day he suffers so, yet methinks his body agonizes less than his soul. He seems to be in the grip of devils. But, devils or not, he only swallows a bit of broth. He must eat more else he shall surely die.” The older woman sighed. She was plump and weathered by the wind. Blue-eyed and ruddy, she had spent her life struggling against the land she dearly loved.
Edda nodded and wiped the stranger’s clammy brow. She pushed damp curls off his forehead. “Husband is glad to bind us to this stranger.”
“Indeed I am!” bellowed Cornelis as he strode to the table. The dark-eyed farmer sat down and wiped the summer sweat off his broad, bearded face. He lifted his young son and daughter to his lap and poured a tankard of beer. He cut a thick slice of cheese and said, “He’s yet to waken, Edda?”
“Aye, husband,” answered his wife. “He seems fevered again. His wraps are clean and tight… the infection is clear and your mother seared the stump in places again this morning.”
Cornelis grimaced. He gestured toward the unconscious man. “That, m’kinder, is who saved your vader.” The young man tilted his head to pour a long, welcome draught of beer down his parched throat. He set his tankard down hard, then sat silently in thought. A hot June breeze rustled the thatch atop the brick-and-peat farmhouse.
Anna waited patiently and smiled lovingly at her grown son. A few years prior her husband had been killed overthrowing Lineburg Castle, but before that he had fought with the militia in several skirmishes. She was no stranger to the way men faced the haunting recollections of bloody combat.