Berta closed her eyes and listened to the wind now howling from the east. The door of the common room suddenly burst open and a chilly air blew through the hovel. Three men in heavy wraps tramped across the room and crowded into Berta’s bedchamber.
Arnold pushed Heinrich aside and bent over the woman. She was now breathing quickly and her skin was pale. “Woman,” he blurted. “Here’s the bailiff and the priest. Now, what’s this about?”
Berta peered through the room’s gloom into the haunting dark eyes of Arnold. “My thanks,” she whispered. The woman leaned upward on her elbow. “Can y’give me leave with these two?”
Arnold grumbled and left the room, leaving a perplexed Father Gregor and the stiff-eyed Bailiff Herold staring at the bed. Herold picked at his long nose and tapped his foot impatiently. The woman then reached beneath her and pulled a pouch from the straw. “Bailiff, thanks be to God you’ve come with the father. Listen, I beg you. I am about to die. M’papa taught me to keep things to good order.” She paused. “I’ve needs to know m’sons and Effi shall be watched. And I needs to know that Heinrich’s land will be safe for him as well as this house and—”
Herold cursed the woman. “You’d drag me through the mud and ice for this!”
“Hold, good sir,” pleaded Berta. Her lips trembled. “There’s more … but please swear on the Virgin you’ll tell no other.” She held her hand open on her belly. Heinrich, wide-eyed and dumbstruck, leaned between the hips of Gregor and Herold as his mother whispered, “This … this is a relic. ‘Tis no common gold piece. I do swear on my soul this comes from Jerusalem. It was touched to the Holy Sepulchre by the Grand Master of the Templars.”
Herold snatched the piece and held it to the dim light of the room’s smoky candle. The priest gawked. “Relic? Hmm, look here, it’s been bit! Have you ever heard of a relic that’s been gnawed?”
The men laughed. Indeed, the gold coin bore a long dash and a short one—marks made from a good tooth next to a broken one. Heinrich squared his shoulders bravely. “If m’Mutti says it to be a relic, it is! She’s never spoken a lie, she’s—”
Herold cracked the five-year-old boy hard across the face. “Shut yer mouth, ye dim little fool!”
Father Gregor spoke firmly to Berta. “Woman, your soul is in peril of the Pit this day; you needs speak truth.”
Berta’s eyes fluttered. “What, what did you say, father?”
“You ought not be lying to your priest whil’st in death’s valley!”
“Lying? Oh, I’m not lying, father. I prayed to it when the Templars came to save us, I…”
“Enough, woman!”
Desperate tears fell from Berta’s widened eyes. She spoke with hoarse urgency. “Father, I am not lying. I needs beg forgiveness for m’sin, I’ve…”
Herold laughed out loud. “Woman, you’re a fool!”
Young Heinrich had enough. He leapt from his corner with a shriek and swung his little fists at the bailiffs legs. Herold kicked the boy away and Father Gregor slapped him hard to the ground. “Lie there, Heinrich, and do not move! Do not look up, stare at the ground to which you shall someday be returned!”
This was all too much for poor Berta. She gave up her ghost while no one noticed.
The household of Berta became the household of Baldric. Heinrich, Axel, Effi, and Herwin now spent each day in constant terror of the man who raged about his little empire like a tyrant. Void of affection, vacant of joy, filled only with heavy shadows and rage, the hovel that had once been full of love and warmth now did little more than shelter them from the harsh elements.
But for Baldric, life seemed suddenly improved. He now had charge of four lessers on whom he could vent his wrath. His position with the monks was envied, and his soul was about to be rescued by the coming of Easter. He had learned that Father Gregor had received an edict from the archbishop’s nuncio ordering the priest to administer the sacrament of Eucharist to the folk of Weyer. The Eucharist was taken weekly, sometimes even daily, by the parish priests on behalf of their flock but was rarely offered directly to laymen. For those bearing the increasing weight of life’s sins it would be a relief beyond measure. Baldric hid his torment well, but he suffered an increasing fear of the Judgment. The blood and flesh of Christ followed by an Easter penance would make him feel clean again.
The whole village was enlivened by the Easter Mass, and they looked toward spring with new hope. On May Day’s dawn, Effi gathered dew on a bunch of wildflowers and wiped it on her brothers for good luck. Heinrich thanked her, then climbed the churchyard steps to sit by his mother’s grave and mourn. It was a ritual he had followed each day since her death. From time to time he ambled to his father’s grave and stared. He had never understood the mystery of his father’s passing. Some, including his uncles and the priest, told him Kurt had died from infection, yet his mother had blamed him somehow. And so, with such heavy thoughts as these weighing on him, Heinrich considered his predicament and that of his siblings and he wept. After all, it was easy to reason that their current misery was on account of his failures as well.