Quest of Hope(17)
Heinrich’s affections had become quickly attached to the dog as they had to his best friend and cousin Richard, the son of Arnold. Blond and handsome, Richard was lean, strong, and quick of mind. Arnold swore he’d see the boy knighted in Runkel’s castle someday—an ambitious dream for the son of a cart-hauler.
The mastiff and young Richard were not Heinrich’s only friends, however. Emma’s son, Ingelbert, was one whom the lad had oft wished he might see more often. Heinrich rarely saw Emma’s son, save those times Ingelbert fetched water with his mother at the village well. Heinrich’s own mother, as well as the other mothers of the village, had banned their children from speaking with Ingelbert, believing Emma and her misshapen child to bear a curse of some sort.
For her part, Emma persistently offered Berta kindness on every occasion. Heinrich had watched the lonely newcomer help his mother break the ice off the well one cold day in the winter just past. It was such kindness that had caught the child’s attention quickly, and the selfless acts were beginning to calm Berta’s fears.
It was July thirty-first, just before the feast of Lammas, when Baldric and Arnold arrived at Kurt’s hovel. Exhausted from the day’s toil, Kurt slowly opened the door and stepped out into the humid night air. After the brothers conversed in low, urgent tones for a few moments, Kurt finally nodded and returned to his wife, his face tight and flushed. “Wife, we’ve business to tend to this night and tomorrow we feast. Sleep well and mind the children. I shall return soon.”
Berta felt a sudden chill. She sensed danger but dared not ask more. Holding her husband’s palm against her cheek, Berta whispered a blessing to her man. With that, Kurt moved toward the door. He touched his boys’ heads briefly. Weak with fever and favoring his badly infected right arm, he paused to retrieve a steel carving knife hidden beneath the table. He shoved it under his belt and stepped out into the dark village.
Arnold’s labors as a cart-hauler earned him two pennies per day but also paid a hearty wage in information. A peddler told him of a distant shepherd’s family swearing oaths against some folk in Weyer. He further learned that some shepherds of Runkel’s lands were conspiring to “teach smother lesson to Weyer” after they delivered bales of wool to nearby Arfurt, lying on the far bank of the Lahn.
Arnold and Baldric’s closest friend, Dietrich, were waiting on the road beneath the church with another man, Paul, the dyer for the monks. Paul had come from Mainz as a freeman in search of work. He had married a dyer’s daughter from another village but moved to Weyer in hopes of establishing a shop in the growing village. He had made the unfortunate mistake of borrowing money from Baldric and now was required to pay his terms of interest.
Under the cloak of a new moon the five men whispered their plan. Arnold flashed a knife normally used to bleed swine and demanded the others show their weapons. Kurt yanked his blade from his belt and Dietrich revealed his own. Baldric preferred a mallet he had taken from an ironsmith in a wager. Paul shrugged timidly. “I’ve no weapon, I—”
Arnold snarled, “You of all of us ought have a sword or bow! Fool, dimwit!”
Indeed, serfs were not permitted to own weapons, but freemen were expected to keep a long sword or bow in case called upon to render military service.
Baldric growled. “Here, I’ve a blade in m’boot. Take it, y’dunce and use it well.”
Paul took the short knife with a trembling hand. He touched its edge with his forefinger and closed his eyes.
It was soon after the bells of compline when the five men began their dark journey. They climbed the steep roadway leading them out of Weyer, paused briefly along the ridge-line, and then began to trot down the long slope toward the torches of distant Villmar. About halfway to the abbey’s village they veered off the road and followed Arnold along a cartpath heading northeastward. They ran quietly under a star-sprinkled sky, and before long they could smell the wet mud and waters of the Lahn River.
The Lahn was fairly deep, hemmed by steep banks. It was a bowshot in breadth and sluggish, except in the spring thaw. The group paused at the bank for a moment and crouched in the night’s mist now hanging about their knees. Then, without a sound, they slipped into the Lahn’s warm waters and vanished in the fog. They swam awkwardly through the black water until they found themselves clawing their way up the slippery bank on the far side. The group was now across the border of the abbey’s lands and was trespassing the lands of Lord Klothar, the new lord of Runkel.
As bound serfs, all but Paul could be severely punished for leaving the realm to which they were pledged. The oaths of their ancestors had shackled them to the land they were born upon and only escape to a free city for a year and a day or the purchase of manumission could set them free.