Every night I had dreams of Sophie, of bringing something precious back to her. Of her blond braids, her delicate, happy laugh. I kept my eyes fixed on the western horizon, her image like a soft trade wind bringing me home.
When we reached Venice, my heart leaped to set foot on European soil. The same soil that led to Veille du Père.
But I was thrown in jail, turned in by the suspicious captain for a fee. I barely had the time to hide my pouch of valuables on the quay before I was tossed in a narrow, stinking hole filled with thieves and smugglers of all nationalities.
The guards all called me Jeremiah, a crazed-looking man in a tattered robe who clung to his staff. I did my best to keep my good humor and pleaded with my jailers that I was only trying to get home to my wife. They laughed. “A lice-filled beast like you has a wife?”
But luck had not run out for me yet. A few weeks later, a local noble paid for the release of ten prisoners as expiation for an offense. One died during the night, so they chose the affable, crazy Jeremiah to round out the number. “Go back to your wife, Frenchie,” the bailiff said as they handed me my staff. “But first, I advise you to find a bath.”
That very night, I found the pouch with my valuables where I had hidden it and began to walk. West across the marshy road to the mainland. Toward home.
I headed across Italy. Every town I came to, I told tales at the local inn for a meal of bread and ale. Farmers and drunks listened spellbound to the siege of Antioch, the ferocity of the Turks, and my friend Nicodemus’s untimely end.
I climbed through the smaller hills and then the Alps. The winds there blew cold and strong. It took a full month to cross them. But finally, as I descended from the peaks, the language that greeted me was French. French! My heart leaped, knowing I was near my home.
The towns became familiar. Digne, Avignon, Nîmes . . . Veille du Père was only days away. And Sophie.
I started to worry about how it would be. Would she even recognize the haggard mess I had turned into? So often, I pictured her face as I would stand in front of her for that first time. She would be heating soup or making butter, wearing her pretty patterned smock, her blond braids peeking through her white cap. “Hugh,” she would gasp, too stunned to move. Just Hugh, not another word. Then she would leap into my arms and I would squeeze her as if I had never left. She would touch my face and hands to make sure I was no apparition, then smother me with kisses. One look at my face, my rags, and my sore, bare feet, and Sophie would know immediately what I had been through. “So . . .” She would do her best to smile. “You have not quite returned a knight after all?”
It was in a damp rain that I finally reached the outskirts of Veille du Père. I went down on my knees.
Chapter 22
THOSE LAST MILES, I almost ran the entire distance. I began to recognize roads I had traveled, sights I was familiar and comfortable with. I tried to put aside everything bad that had happened to me. Nico, Robert, Civetot, Antioch. All of the misery seemed so distant now, unconnected. I was home.
My plight was over. I had arrived, no knight or squire, not even a free man. Yet I felt like the wealthiest noble in the world.
I spotted the familiar bubbly stream and the stone wall that bordered it, which led to town. Gilles’s barley field came into view. Then a bend I knew so well, and the stone bridge up ahead.
Veille du Père . . .
I stood there, like a beggar over a feast, just a few moments to take it in. I was filled with everything that had happened, the horrors I had put behind me, the many miles and months I had traveled, dreaming only of Sophie’s face, her touch, her smile.
How I wished it were July and I could walk into town bearing a sunflower. I searched out the square. Familiar faces, doing their work. It all seemed just as I remembered. My old friends Odo the smith and Georges the miller . . . Father Leo’s church . . .
Our inn . . .
Our inn! I fixed on it in horror. No, it cannot be. . . .
In the blink of an eye, I knew that everything had changed.
Chapter 23
I BOLTED TOWARD THE VILLAGE SQUARE, the pallor of a ghost upon my face.
Children stared at me, then ran toward their houses. “It is Hugh. Hugh De Luc. He’s back from the war,” they shouted.
All that could have seemed familiar about me was my mane of red hair. People rushed up to me, neighbors I recognized, whom I had not set eyes upon in two years, their faces caught between shock and joy. “Hugh, praise God, it is you.”
But I pushed past, barely acknowledging them. I was drawn on a direct path to our inn.
Our home . . . My heart sank as I came to the spot.
A burned-out hole was left where our inn had once been.
Among the cinders stood a single charred support post that had once held up a two-story structure, built by the hands of my wife’s father.
Our inn had been burned to the ground.
“Where is Sophie?” I muttered, first to the charred ruins of the inn, then to faces in the gathered crowd.
I went from person to person, sure that any moment I would spot her coming back from the well. But everyone stood silently.
My heart began to beat insanely. “Where is Sophie?” I shouted. “Where is my wife?”
Sophie’s older brother, Matthew, finally pushed out of the crowd. When he saw me, his expression shifted — from surprise to a look of deep concern. He stepped forward, hurling his arms around me. “Hugh, I can’t believe it. Thank God you’ve come back.”
I knew the worst had happened. I searched his eyes. “What’s happened, Matthew? Tell me, where is my wife?”
A look of deep sorrow came onto his face. Oh, God . . . I almost did not want him to tell me the rest. He led me by the arm to the remains of our home. “There were riders, Hugh. Ten, twelve . . . They swept in, in the dead of night, like devils, burning everything they could. Black crosses on their chests. They wore no colors. We had no hint of who they were. Just the crosses.”
“Riders . . . ?” My blood was frozen with dread. “What riders, Matthew? What did they do to Sophie?”
He placed a hand gently upon my shoulder. “They burned three dwellings in their path. Paul the carter, Sam, old Gilles, their wives and children, killed as they fled. Then they came to the inn. I tried to stop them, Hugh, I did,” he cried.
I seized him by the shoulders. “And Sophie?” I knew the worst had happened. No, this could not be. Not now . . .
“She’s gone, Hugh.” Matthew shook his head.
“Gone?”
“She tried to run, but the men took her inside. They beat her, Hugh. . . .” He pursed his lips and bowed his head. “They did worse. I heard her screams. They held me as they beat and raped her. Knights tore up the place, ripping it post by post. Then they dragged her out. She was like a lifeless thing, barely alive. I was sure they would leave her to die, but the leader threw her over his horse while the others released their torches. It was then that . . .”
I could barely hear him. A distant voice was echoing, No, this cannot be! My eyes welled up with tears. “It was then that what, Matthew?”
He bowed his head. “They dragged her away, Hugh. I know she is dead.”
All strength drained from my legs. I sank to my knees. Oh, God, how could this have happened? How could I have left her to this fate? My Sophie gone. . . . I gazed upon the charred ruins of my former life.
“Norcross did this, didn’t he? Baldwin . . . ?”
“We do not know for certain.” Matthew shook his head. “If I did, I would go after them myself. They were beasts, but faceless ones. They wore no crests. Their visors were down. Everyone ran to the woods for cover. Yours was the only house they entered. It was as if they came for you.”
For me . . . Those bastards. I had fought two years for Baldwin’s own liege. I had marched across half the world and seen the worst things. And still, they took from me the one thing I loved.
I grabbed some dust from the rubble and
let it slip through my fists. “My poor Sophie . . .”
Matthew knelt down beside me. “Hugh, there’s more. . . .”
“More? What could be more?” I looked into his eyes.
He put a hand on my face. “After you left, Sophie had a son.”
Chapter 24
MATTHEW’S WORDS HIT ME LIKE A STONE WALL, collapsing over me. A son . . .
For three years Sophie and I had tried to conceive, to no result. We had wanted a child more than anything. We even spoke of it that last night we were together. I had left her, and never even knew I had a son.
I turned toward Matthew, a flicker of hope alive in my heart.
“He is dead, Hugh. He wasn’t even a year old. The bastards killed him that same night. They tore him from Sophie’s arms as she tried to flee.”
A wall of tears rushed at my eyes. A son . . . A son I would never know or hold. I had been through the fiercest battles, the worst of all horrors. But nothing could have prepared me for this.
“How?” I muttered. “How did my son die?”
“I can’t even say it.” Matthew’s face was ashen. “Just believe me when I say that he is dead.”
I repeated my question, this time fixed upon his eyes. “How?”
His voice was so quiet. “As they threw Sophie’s lifeless body over his mount, the leader said, ‘We have no room for such a toy. Toss him in the flames.’”
I felt a pressure building up, an anger clawing at me as if my insides were ripping through my skin. God had smiled on us after all that time. He had blessed us with a son. Now He spat at me with the sharpest mockery.
How could I have left them? How could I still be alive if they were dead?
I looked at Matthew and asked, “What was his name?”
Matthew swallowed. “She named him Phillipe.”
I felt a lump catch in my throat. Phillipe was the name of the goliard who had raised me. It was her tribute to me. Sweet Sophie, you are gone. My son too . . . I felt the urge to die right there amid the charred ash, the ruins of my old life.
“Hugh,” Matthew said, lifting me up, “you have to come.” He led me up the trail to a knoll where I had just stood over the town. A small slate stone marked my son’s grave.
I sat down under a shroud of tall poplars. “Phillipe De Luc, son of Hugh and Sophie,” was scratched into the stone. “Year of our Lord MXCVIII.”
I laid my head on the earth and wept. For my sweet Phillipe, whom I would never see, not even once in my life. For my wife, who was surely dead.
Was this why I was spared? Was this why the Turk had not swung his murderous sword? So I would live to see all that I loved lost? Was this why the laughter had saved me? So God could laugh at me now?
I took off the pouch that contained the things I had brought back for Sophie: a perfume box, some ancient coins, the scabbard, the golden cross — and I dug a hole next to my baby’s grave. I gently placed my “treasures” in it. They were worthless to me now. “They belong to you,” I whispered to Phillipe. My sweet baby.
I smoothed out the earth and once more laid my head on the ground. I’m so sorry, Phillipe and Sophie. Slowly my grief began to harden into rage. I knew Baldwin had ordered this. And Norcross had carried it out. But why? Why?
I’m just an innkeeper, I thought. I am nothing. Just a serf.
But a serf who will see you dead.
Chapter 25
A CROWD GATHERED AROUND US as Matthew and I came back into town. Father Leo, Odo, my other friends . . . Everyone wanted to comfort and bless me. And hear of my two years in the war.
But I pushed past them. I had to go to the inn. Its ruins . . . I sifted through the charred wood and ash, searching for anything that breathed of her, my Sophie — a piece of cloth, a dish, a last memento of what I had lost.
“She spoke of you all the time, Hugh,” Matthew told me. “She missed you terribly. We all thought you were lost in the war. But not Sophie.”
“You are certain, brother, that she is dead?”
“I am.” Matthew shrugged. “When they took her she was already more dead than alive.”
“But you did not actually see her die? You don’t know for sure?”
“Not for sure. But I beg you, brother, not to cling to false hope. I’m her flesh and blood. And I damn well pray she was dead as they dragged her out of here.”
I met his eyes. “So she may not be dead, Matthew?”
He looked at me quizzically. “You must accept it, Hugh. If she was not then, I’m certain she was soon. Her body could have been left somewhere along the road.”
“So you searched the road? And did you find her? Has anyone traveling from the west come upon her remains?”
“No. No one.”
“Then there’s a chance. You say she never doubted me. That she knew I would return. Well, I do the same for her.”
I found myself in the part of the inn where our living space had been. Everything was cinder. Our bed, a chest of drawers . . . On the floor, I noticed something reflecting light.
I dropped to my knees, swept away ash. My heart almost exploded with joy. Tears welled in my eyes.
It was Sophie’s comb. Her half of the one she’d placed in my hand the day I left. It was charred, broken; it almost crumbled in my hand. But in my blood, I felt her!
I held it up, and from my pouch hastily removed the other half. I fitted them together as best I could. In that moment, Sophie came alive to me — her eyes, her laugh — as vibrantly as when I had last seen her.
“These knights, Matthew, they didn’t leave her to die in the same flames as my son. They took her for a reason.” I looked up at him, holding the comb aloft. “Perhaps it is not such false hope after all.”
Outside, my old friends Odo and Georges the miller were waiting.
“Give us the word, Hugh,” Georges said. “We will hunt the bastards with you. We’ve all suffered. We know who is responsible. They deserve to die.”
“I know.” I put my hand on the miller’s shoulder. “But first I must find Sophie.”
“Your wife is dead,” Odo replied. “We saw it, Hugh, though it seems more nightmare than real.”
“You saw her dead?” I waited for the smith to answer.
I looked at Georges. “Or you?”
They both shrugged guiltily. They glanced at Matthew for support.
“Sophie lives as my own Alo lives,” the miller said. “In Heaven.”
“For you, Georges, but not for me. Sophie still lives on this earth. I know it. I can feel her.”
I picked up my staff and pouch and slung a skin of water around my neck. I headed toward the stone bridge.
“What are you going to do, Hugh, jab them with that stick?” Odo hurried to my side. “You are just one man. With no armor or sword.”
“I’m going to find her, Odo. I promise, I’ll find Sophie.”
“Let me get you some food,” Odo pleaded. “Or some ale. You still drink ale, don’t you, Hugh? The army didn’t cure you of that? Next I’ll hear you’ve been going to church on Sundays.”
From his guarded look, it was clear he thought he would never see me again.
“I will bring her back, Odo. You’ll see.”
I took my stick and headed into the woods.
Toward Treille.
Chapter 26
I RAN IN A BLIND HAZE in the direction I had come. Toward my liege’s castle at Treille.
Grief tore at me like wild dogs. My son had died because of me. Because of my stupid folly. Because of my foolishness and pride.
As I ran, a swell of bitterness surged inside. The thought of that bastard Norcross, or any of his henchmen, having my poor Sophie . . .
I had fought for these so-called nobles in the Holy Land while they raped and slaughtered in the name of God. I had marched and killed and followed the Pope’s call. And this was my wage. Not freedom, not a changed life, but misery and scorn. I had been a fool to trust the rich.
I ran until my legs gave ou
t. Then, exhausted and blind with rage, I fell to the ground, covering my sores in dirt.
I had to find Sophie. I know you are alive. I’ll make you well. I know how you’ve suffered.
At every turn, I prayed I would not stumble over her body. Every time I didn’t, it gave me hope that she was alive.
After a day of traveling, I looked around and didn’t know where I was. I had no food and had run out of water. All that pushed me on was rage. I checked the sun. Was I heading east or north? I had no idea.
But still I ran. My legs were like heavy irons. I was dizzy and my stomach ached for food. My eyes were glazed over with tears. Yet I ran.
Passersby on the road looked at me as if I were mad. A madman with his staff. “Treille . . .” I begged them.
They scurried to get out of the way. Pilgrims, merchants, even outlaws let me pass for the fury in my eyes.
I knew not if it was one day or two. I ran until my legs gave out again. As I came to my senses, darkness clung to me. The night was cold, and I was shivering. Ominous sounds hooted from the brush.
From deep in the woods, I heard the rushing water of a stream. I clawed my way off the road and into the woods, following the sound.
Suddenly I lost my footing. I grasped for a bush, but my hand slipped. I started to tumble. I clawed for anything to hold, a vine, a branch. The ground disappeared beneath me.
Jesus . . . I was falling.
Let it come. I deserve it. I will die out here in the night.
I called to Sophie as I hurtled out of control down the ravine.
My head smacked against something hard. I felt a warm and viscous fluid fill my mouth. “I’m coming,” I said one more time.
To Sophie.
To the howling darkness . . .
Then the world went black on me, and that was much better, thank you, Lord.
Chapter 27
I CAME TO — not to the rush of water, or anything heavenly, but to a low, dangerous, rumbling sound.