Quest of Hope(155)

For Heinrich, this “salt city” was like nothing he had ever seen. He walked through its snow-whitened streets dumbstruck and astonished at the endless stalls of guildsmen and merchants. He passed a row of cobblers, a strip of fowlers, four goldsmiths, then a tinker. His head turned this way and that; tanners and weavers, grocers and wheelwrights. His eye studied the mysterious banners and signs that hung above the doors. Had the man been more learned he might have known it was the name of St. Catherine that graced the shops of wheelwrights. After all, Catherine’s body had been broken on a wheel. The needlemakers were marked by signs of St. Sebastian, the martyr slain by arrows, and the image of St. Mary-Magdalene hung above the perfumers’ doors.

Heinrich walked slowly until he came to a bookmaker’s shop. He paused and peered inside. The proprietor smiled and bade Heinrich enter. The baker ducked through the low door and greeted the man politely. He gazed about the dim-lit shop and felt a lump grow in his throat. “Wouldn’t Emma be pleased?”

“Eh?”

“Ah, good sir, m’pardon. I was remembering an old friend that worked in parchment.” Heinrich surveyed the shelves of ink, raven quills, knives, binding stitch, and the choirs of folded pages, and the leather stretched on drying racks. It was a shop for people of wealth. He smiled and nodded approvingly at this and that until he discovered a colored page of such beauty and astonishing craft that his very breath stopped.

The proprietor smiled. “Ah, the blessed knots and links of the Irish! Gloria tibi, Domine!”

Heinrich’s eye remained fixed on the artwork as though a prisoner of its comforting sublimate.

“God’s Word honored with a bit of heaven’s glory, I say,” added the proprietor. “Color and light… the Irishman who does this work says it is the very essence of our hope.”

Heinrich nodded without speaking. He stared at the parchment’s hues: dark reds and blues, yellows and greens. Within the artist’s curls and graceful turns, gold leaf glittered and shimmered. It was as though the colors of Creation’s rainbow were lit by the sun and offered in all their glory on this single page of Scripture. The man began to weep.

Heinrich hurried from the shop and leaned against the cold stone of the three-story building. He covered his face to hide his tears and in the blackness of his palm he saw Emma smiling at him, pointing him heavenward. “Oh, Emma,” he groaned. His mind carried him to her garden of wildflowers and butterflies. He imagined lying within the blooms of June, staring at the bright blue sky with Richard at his side.

“Are you in need, man?”

Heinrich was startled.

“May I help?” a sickly young man pressed further.

“Uh, nay, good sir. But m’thanks to you.”

The man nodded. He was leaning on a makeshift crutch and his leg was bandaged with a discolored wrap.

Heinrich would have preferred to hurry away but his heart held him fast. The young man was thin and drawn, slightly yellowed and hollow-eyed. “Methinks you’d be the one in need,” observed the baker.

“Ah, my leg’s been shattered in the archbishop’s mine and it seems my time is short. My name is Dietmar of Gratz.” He coughed and shivered.

“Gratz?”

“’Tis in the Duchy of Styria near the Kingdom of the Huns.”

“The Huns. Ne’er met one.”

“You needs hope you don’t. They raid the borders from time to time. I lost my lands to their treachery three years prior.”

“You are a freeman?”

“Aye. You?”

Heinrich wasn’t sure any longer. He no longer felt like the property of Villmar’s monks, yet he assumed the law would say he was. His delay caught the notice of Dietmar.

“A runaway?”

The title snagged Heinrich. His heart skipped and his belly fluttered. “Runaway? Nay, sir. I am a pilgrim from … from Stedingerland in the far north.”

Dietmar nodded approvingly. “I have heard of your people. Seems word of your ways is troubling many a lord’s court throughout all the realms.” He paused to gather strength. “When I was a lord, I was troubled by the likes of you as well. Now, it seems, I find your rebellious ways delicious!”

Heinrich smiled. The young man seemed earnest and honest. “You say you were injured in the mines?”

“Ja. I worked for the archbishop’s steward, Laszlo. The man’s a Christian Hun. He’s a clever devil from Pest along the Danube. I was one of his clerks. He sent me to the new mine at Hallein to do a reckoning of charcoal.” Dietmar paused and sat atop a keg. He coughed and wiped some spittle off his chin with his sleeve. “A timber fell from a cart and broke my leg … hasn’t even begun to heal in near a month and now I fear I’ve mormal in the wound.”