Heinrich was nearly bursting with excitement as the roadway gradually clogged with more and more travelers. Merchants, farmers, carts laden with goods, impatient consorts, and companies of cavalry jostled and hurried along the now dusty road. Heinrich had been told to circuit the city and enter from the south—it would be a more advantageous route to the little church.
The well-worn roadway was arrow-straight and flat, made of dark gray, almost black blocks of basalt. On either side were ancient ruins pilfered for their narrow, red-brown bricks or covered by creepers and vines. The blocks beneath his feet were about a man’s forearm square, rather rounded with age and often grooved by what Heinrich imagined were iron wheels from long-ago carts and chariots. To either side were gardens and ploughed fields, cypress trees and umbrella pines, chestnut tree and rhododendrons. A few modest farmhouses sheltered dark-eyed folk who seemed unimpressed by the steady flow of traffic passing them by.
The man was eager but growing more nervous. He moved to the side of the road and took a brief respite. He watched the colorful pageant passing by, then stared wistfully ahead. He drew a deep breath and imagined Rome to be filled with the songs of angels and the aroma of heaven’s gardens. He closed his eye and pictured golden streets, jeweled portals, and silk banners. He could hear brass trumpets summoning the Virgin to bless penitent pilgrims such as he. He imagined the pope stepping lightly down the Holy Stairs, the Scala Santa, to receive the old Norseman’s pitiful necklace. He felt better.
A voice interrupted Heinrich’s thoughts. “Saints Peter and Paul stepped there.”
Heinrich opened his eye. “Eh?”
It was a young Saxon lad who Heinrich judged as a novice by his robes.
“Saint Paul stepped here, and Saint Peter, too.”
Heinrich looked about. “Where?”
“Here. On this road. This is the Appian Way, the road Rome’s legions traveled and the road the apostles walked.”
Heinrich stared in disbelief.
“’Tis true, pilgrim. Ahead are the holy catacombs … tombs of our brethren gone on before some thousand years ago. Then farther is the Porta Appia through Aurelian’s Wall. The wall is nearly a thousand years old itself!”
Heinrich stared at his feet. He was about to tread where saints had actually walked. He lifted his foot toward the block of pavement and hesitated. When he set it down it was as if a surge of power entered his body. He muttered to himself, then bowed his head.
It was dusk on Friday, the thirty-first of December, 1210, when a weary and dejected Heinrich finally stood at the door of Santa Maria in Domnica church. He paused and glanced over his shoulder at the ruin of an ancient aqueduct standing nearby. Beyond it, where the city sloped downward in the distant center of his view, he saw the gray walls of the infamous Coliseum.
Rome had already disappointed him. From the moment he had passed through the deep gate of the massive, double-arched city wall he was sickened by the septic stench of stagnant sewers and the putrid odor of human waste. He had walked past run-down and abandoned villas on the broken cobbles of the Caelian Hill. Goats and sheep grazed between the columns of a once-mighty empire. Bricks lay in heaps aside collapsed homes, and weeds grew where lush gardens had once boasted blooms from all regions of the known world. The few green sprigs of Advent hanging here and there did little to add the cheer of Christmas to a place that had fallen so very far from glory.
The City of Seven Hills was the heart of an empire that had once ruled the earth from the bogs of Britain to sunbaked Arabia. Its power and might had made Rome a city of glory in the center of a world forever changed. Yet great cities, like empires, always crumble under the weight of things greater than themselves, and by the time Heinrich arrived in Rome it had become a pitiful shadow of its former self. From its zenith of some one million inhabitants it had decayed into an overgrown, diseased, and gasping home to fewer than twenty thousand.
Heinrich grimaced at the horrid odor curling within his nostrils. He longed for the clean air of the mountain spruce or the briny breezes of Stedingerland and the sea. He surveyed the faded tile rooftops of the dismal city and sighed. ’Tis a certain place to do penance. The sun was setting and the shadows were growing long. Heinrich gathered his courage and knocked on the door.
None answered, so he knocked again, harder. At last a small window within the door opened and an eye peered out. “Si?”
“G-guten Tag,” stuttered Heinrich. “I am a pilgrim come to do penance.”
“Si? Avanti!” The window closed with a slam.
Heinrich scratched his head and knocked again. Twice. The window opened and a few sharp words were hurled at the dumbfounded baker. The window slammed shut again.