The men of Weyer murmured, and Father Pious, sitting at the darkest edge of the ring, groused. “Fool! Heretic!”
Balean stared into the bowl of lentils cupped in his hands. He waited for a few moments, then continued. “Ah, father, I know less of these things than I once imagined, but whatever he was, he moved me closer to God.”
Heinrich spoke from the shadows. “Have you his name?”
“His name? Nay, I shall sink in m’grave wishing I had thought to ask it. Nay, I’ve not his name but shall surely remember him. He was a bit vulgar, though his kindness and the twinkle in his eyes urged me somehow. He disappeared into the wood, but something of him remained within me. I bade my former life farewell and I vowed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
“My journey was joined by countless others: men, women, and even a few children, and I found them full of piety, Christian charity, and a zeal I thought only could be found in the chambers of Rome. I had hoped to find passage from Genoa, but upon my arrival was told the seas were filled with pirates. Other pilgrims assured me it would be to my great gain to follow the steps of the first crusaders. Their sacred ghosts would lead me through the sunny cities of Greece, through the realm of the eastern Church, then across the sands of the Turks, past the citadels of Antioch and Acre, and finally into Christian Jerusalem.
“Ah, my new friends, it was a most wondrous penance. For my feet did bleed, like Christ’s, and I thirsted as I had never thirsted before. I was naked and I was cold, I was hungry and in danger. I, like Christ, did suffer for sins and I paid for them. Then, when I saw the white walls of the Holy City, it was as though I were entering Zion!
“Here I dwelt near the Holy Sepulchre and I prayed at Golgotha. I served the Hospitallers in feeding the poor and tending the wounded. The infidel pressed against our lands all the while and we were in constant danger. Our young king, Baldwin, died of leprosy and we began to wonder if God’s grace was about to be withdrawn. Many of us continued in fasting and prayer for many days when news came that Christian knights had plundered a caravan in which the mother of the great heathen sultan, Saladin, was a member.
“Saladin is a mighty warrior dressed in flowing white robes and a shining headdress. It is said he rallied legions to his side with but a nod. Somehow, I soon found myself a servant to both Templars and Hospitaller knights at the springs of Saffuria as they gathered for battle. I remember well the hard eyes of the Norman archers, the set jaws of the French and English axe-men, and the songs the mounted knights sang to their horses on the eve of that awful day.”
Heinrich sat still as an owl in a summertime tree. He blinked his eyes in wonder and waited for more. His mind swirled and spun, and he only wished poor Ingly could grasp the magnificence of it all.
“We moved at dawn, hurrying toward Tiberius, where Saladin had gathered a great army. Our knights attacked the infidel with great courage, but a terrible slaughter ensued, and by evening we were driven back to Hittin, the place where Christ preached His Sermon on the Mount. The infidels charged our armies with their cursed light horses, dashing and darting about, weaving between our brave knights like a shuttle on a loom. In and out they came, forward and back, left and right, slashing and chopping away at our broken lines until the ground was littered with the bodies of our dead.
“When night came our conquered knights huddled in gallant expectation of their coming death. I was sent to water the wounded, and I spent the next hours of my life in some horrid level of hell. With my torch in hand, I stepped between the severed bodies, the split heads, the broken joints of men dead and dying. Our priests bobbed through the eerie light, bending on and off their knees, praying for the souls of their butchered sheep.”
The man stopped and shuddered. The village was silent. “That night we servants were sent away so that we might find safety in Jerusalem. It was later said that our exhausted, outnumbered knights fought well, but in the end, they did yield. They submitted themselves nobly to the supposed mercies of Islam. Ha! They were beheaded by the thousands, and Rainald de Chatillon, the man who had captured Saladin’s mother, was killed by the sultan himself. It is said that some forty-five thousand Christian warriors were lost in that awful place.
“Then it was not long before the armies of Islam were at our gates. We had learned of the fall of Tyre, Tripolis, and Antioch but we believed the Holy City would be held … it must be held! Our city was bursting with refugees; families from fallen cities throughout Palestine had run to us for safety, each bringing terrible stories of the Turks and their cruel ways.
“Then the enemy came. First, they offered us peace. Indeed! They even offered us land in Syria if we would but give the Holy places up to them and their bloodstained hands. ‘No!’ we answered in one voice. ‘We shall not yield this sacred city!’”