Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade Read Online Free PDF Page B

leading to the village of Oberbrechen. He set his tired back against the smooth bark and slid down to calculate his condition.
    As he breathed the summer night’s clean air, he felt a quiet defiance take root in his young heart—a potent and invigorating sense of self-reliance and independence that was quite pleasing. Like the feeling he had when he dropped Ansel, Wil became aware of an even deeper change, a powerful metamorphosis that was spreading through him. A sense of newfound manhood washed over him and he liked it.
    Wil plucked his hard-won trophy from his belt. He held the deer-foot handle in the palm of his hand and lightly caressed the sharp, serrated edges of its finely crafted blade with his fingers. He smiled. But the sound of approaching horsemen startled the boy and he quickly tucked his dagger away. He pressed his back hard against the wide tree, snickering as his would-be captors galloped past. This quarry you shall not take . He retied Lukas’s leather bag tightly by its cowhide thong and lashed it to his belt as he looked to the nearly moonless sky. The gentle chirps of waking birds reminded him that he must hurry.

Chapter 2
    FLIGHT AND FATHER PIOUS
     

    K arl and Maria were awakened by their mother’s incessant coughing, and their fears now kept them anxious and alert. Impatiently, Karl stood in the low doorway and stared at the night’s sky sometime after matins’ bells. He thought he heard the alarm bell from the distant abbey and strained to hear again. He stepped to the fence gate, ears cocked. Why the alarm?
    Maria came to Karl’s side and looked helplessly into his face.
    “I tell you she’ll be fine,” Karl assured his sister, though he wasn’t so sure. But, always preferring hope to reality, he nodded confidently and quoted Brother Lukas: “Dawn follows the darkest hour of the night.”
    The pair went to their mother’s room where Marta now lay gasping for breath. Karl dipped the rag into the water bowl and wiped his mother’s face and neck. He steeled his heart against the darkness, insisting to himself that he was quite content in his expectations of a miracle. How good God is … how good God shall surely be , he mused a little desperately.
    Marta rose to an elbow. “Where is Wil?” she cried. “Where is my son? Never, never is he by my side when I am in need of him.”
    Karl was suddenly not sure how to answer, yet he dare not lie. “Wil has gone for Brother Lukas and …”
    “I ordered no help other than Frau Anka, and I do not want that mad monk near me!” she rasped. At that, her body shuddered and blood spewed out her mouth and nose, spraying the throat of her flaxen robe and the ragged quilt clutched tightly in her hands. Karl, terrified and suddenly unnerved, hastily reached an awkward hand to help her, knocking the bowl of water off its stand and spilling its contents on his mother’s bed. “Enough of this,” Marta scolded. “You children have failed me again.”
    Maria’s eyes betrayed her hurt and she hid, trembling in the darkness. Karl followed her and leaned close to whisper, “You know how she oft is. She never really means it, and…”
    “I heard that, little man,” rumbled Marta. “You think you have loved me well, do you? You and your brother and that… that sister of yours have borne me sorrow in childbirth and now sorrow in m’death. ’Tis your sins and the sins of your father that I must now bear and ’tis your penalties that I must pay.” Her acrid charge had barely struck its targets when the bitter woman rolled to the edge of her bed, coughing and vomiting and retching in pain.
    Karl’s face was flushed and his eyes dammed with tears. He dashed outside with the empty water bowl, desperate to regain his mother’s favor. He dipped it into the fresh water and flew back to her side. “Mama, I have clean water for…”
    “Fool,” hissed Marta as she struck the bowl from the boy’s shaking hand. “Always the fool. You’ve been little