Quest of Hope(86)
Without rain, the harvest withered. By Lammas there was little left in the fields except stiff stalks of hard and stunted grains. The meadows and pastures had become brown, and their parched grasses cracked and crunched beneath the hard hooves of thin sheep. So it was with the hay, the flax, the orchard fruit, and garden crops. For the peasants of Weyer, fear loomed dark and heavy despite the sunny skies above.
All-Saint’s Day brought no feast, and All Soul’s Eve brought added misery to poor Emma. She sat alone in her hovel and wept as she stared at the door in hopes of its midnight opening. Heinrich did not fail her, and soon after the bells of matins the kind man rapped gently on the woman’s door. The Butterfly Frau rose slowly from her oak stool and shuffled to the door. She was nearly forty now but the sadness of the recent past had stolen years from her. Many of her age had long since passed to their reward but, like a few others, she had been gifted with a constitution that might have carried her for many years to come. Heinrich appeared in the soft light of her beeswax candles. “Ah … good baker!” Emma smiled and embraced the man.
“I could not sleep, Emma. I could only think of you and how you must feel.”
The woman nodded and her chin quivered. “Ah … yes … ‘tis a pain I cannot describe. But God has been good to me. Ingly is surely dancing with his Vati in heaven’s valley of flowers. It is a picture in m’mind that gives me hope, dear lad, hope indeed. So I look to the sun and know that its Maker is what is constant and sure. He is surely where I find m’hope … not here, amongst our shadows and black robes.” She took Heinrich’s hand. “You needs lift your face to the sun, lad.”
The young man hesitated. “Aye … but I’ve m’vow … and your sun has parched the land. What hope is that?”
Emma smiled, patiently. “’Tis true enough. We’ve a need to have eyes that seek far beyond it, for the sun is but a sign, like its sister, the moon. They both urge us to look past our world to the sure things above.”
Heinrich nodded, then mumbled, “But… I’ve m’vow…”
The woman sighed and thanked him for loving her. “Now, good fellow, you’d best return to your two children and that wife of yours. She’s to bear you another quite soon! Now go. I am content with my memories and my hopes … and you’ve reminded me that I am not so very alone.”
So Heinrich returned to the village. Despite the earth’s struggle to bear fruit, the folk continued in nature’s ways of both good times and suffering. Arnold’s wife, Gisela, died from burns received at her own hearth. It seemed to most, however, that Arnold grieved less for her than for the loss of some silver in a recent theft. Richard’s wife, Brunhild, bore a son named Georg, and on the thirteenth day of November, Marta gave birth to another boy. Certain the name “Johann” assured greater blessing, she insisted the lad be baptized Johann Gerberg.
Heinrich was now the proud father of three: Johann Lukas, three years old, Johann Wilhelm, one, and Johann Gerberg. He cherished the lads but often found his way to Margaretha’s little grave where his tender heart would sag heavy deep within his chest.
Pentecost was on May twenty-fifth in the year 1197. Brother Martin, Emma’s old nemesis from the day she had first arrived at the abbey gate, had fallen ill with whitlow and the man was presented to the infirmer for treatment. The infirmer, in turn, sought Brother Lukas’s advice on an herbal compress. Lukas found Martin to be the most pompous of all the brethren. The man would only speak in Scripture—a ploy, believed Lukas, to present a piety that could not be found in his heart. Lukas also thought the man to be a petty thief, a cheat, and one to “share the failures of others” with the superiors. As with all things, thought Lukas, God has provided a means of justice!
The monk recommended an infusion rather than a balm. “Odd,” responded the infirmer, “the man suffers boils not cramps.”
“Aye,” answered Lukas, “but the boils come from poisons in his blood.”
So Brother Martin obediently drank Lukas’s concoction—a blend of stinging nettles and dandelion that left the poor man groaning for hours in the latrine, smitten with a condition that drew loud and earthy complaints from his offended brethren! Lukas was heard laughing loudly in his herbarium, and the smirk on his face when the prior confronted him only served to doom him to hours of penance with the latrine shovel. At thirty-five, the monk should be of a more “calm and serene demeanor,” he was told, and needed to stop “acting as an unbridled novice!”