Echoes of Avalon (Tales of Avalon Book 1) (40 page)

“You said you became better, but not in way you expected.” Katherina let Patrick up. His fidgeting and agitating had finally forced her to relinquish her hold. He now paced on the soft grass.

“Yes, the Crusade changed me...ultimately for the better. But not because it was a Holy Crusade, but because it was a series of events that life threw at me. One can't help but learn from them. Even the bad decisions I made taught me not to make them again.”

“Then why do you dwell on it as if you failed miserably all around?” she asked.

“Because, it wasn't easy. It hurt. It was over three years of pain, discomfort and disenchantment. Like I said with Kellie: knowing doesn't make it hurt any less. It still happened.

“I grew up believing in the Church, in God, in a certain way, and the Crusade shattered all those ideas over time. When I arrived in Flanders, I found a massive rogues’ gallery of misfits looking for a fight. They were uncouth, unclean men looking for any easy out from any crime they had committed in the past against man or God, because that is what Pope Urban promised.

“Certainly there were the true knights of the households of the Princes Bohemund, Godfrey, Tancred, Baldwin, Robert and so forth, but they were in the minority compared to the rabble that followed them in God's name. Raped and pillaged all the way to Jerusalem in that same God's name. In the beginning I didn't know any better. I fell into bad company. The only company that would accept me at first. I was a foreigner, I didn't even speak that much French. They took me under their wing. I stayed with them for the better part of a year. They weren't much better than bandits.

“After Constantinople, we faced the real supposed heathens
―
the Moslems at the battle of Nicaea, which wasn't much of a battle for me. The Moslems were so overwhelmed by our numbers that they surrendered. Then came the battle of Dorylaeum.
That
was a battle. I thought more than once that I was going to die. I was covered head to foot in blood and gore. If the Crusade hadn't seemed all that Holy to me at first, it certainly didn't now. It was my first real battle, and I saw my companions commit acts unholy upon those people, even after they had admitted defeat.”

Patrick paused as he paced. Then he knelt and looked into her pale eyes. “Do you know that in our march to Jerusalem, once in the Eastern lands, our foods and supplies came from Moslem merchants? We could kill their soldiers, take their land, rape their women, but it was perfectly all right as well to buy their goods in the marketplaces. They treated us like kings. They were a pleasant people…helpful, friendly...and they bathed and smelled of perfume. They did not smell of dirt and shit like the men I walked among. Their cloth, their armor and weapons, were superior. We bought them as treasures. I wear mine to this day. These were the heathens we were sent to destroy? I was starting to wonder who the barbarians were: us or them.”

Patrick stood and took to pacing again. “It was then that I took note that even our shining leaders, the princes whose offices were supposedly divine, weren't much better than the thugs I traveled with. They took side expeditions to conquer Moslem establishments that had nothing to do with Jerusalem. They just wanted to fill their coffers. While they were doing that, we common soldiers were crossing the desert in high summer. We ran out of water and food because we were once again ill prepared. I thought I was in hell for the longest time, staggering along with parched and cracked lips.

“But then we came upon the city of Antioch, an ancient place that stood between us and Jerusalem. Here I could understand besieging. Here there was food and water. Here was an obstacle to our goal: the Holy Lands. Here were hostile Moslems. I thanked this opportunity for once.”

Patrick ran his hands over his face and through his hair. “I thought too soon. We did not easily win access to the city like we thought we would. It took eight months. Eight months of then wintry weather that killed more of us than the Moslems did. We hid in wet holes in the earth covered by moldy blankets. We subsisted on marsh reeds.

“I asked myself many, many times
―
why did I stay? To this day I'm not sure. I often wonder what my life would be like if I had left. So many were turning back and returning to Europe.

“I think I stayed because my fear of returning home empty-handed and beaten was more severe than the torment I was then experiencing. I was nothing more than a nobody in Eire, but I still had my pride and I wasn't about to give up. Especially not in the eyes of God. For all the ungodly things that I had seen, I still actually at that point believed that this was all for God. Even if the means were somewhat convoluted.”

He was pacing more furiously and gesturing more wildly with his hands. “Merchants set up camp outside ours. They brought their opium and harlots. Many a Christian fell into temptation there, and they were not ashamed to admit it. These were the chosen, who were to take back the Holy Land? I had long since lost my innocence and naivety, but still held on to certain beliefs. Perhaps I shouldn't have, because it would have made things easier on me spiritually. I could have been numb to the horrors that followed. I could have been jaded.

“Eventually Antioch fell. Just in time for us to be the besieged
―
an army of Moslems came from Mosul to besiege us inside those very same walls. Many more Crusaders left then to Europe. And still I did not go. I think then that is when I started to slip into insanity. I think perhaps I searched for death as a form of liberation from evil and that the Moslems were bringing it. So I stayed.

“But lo and behold, from the hills came a vision of a saint carrying a holy spear that inspired us to sally forth and defeat our captors. I was then truly insane. Gibbering and talking to a God that did not respond. I fought with valor in that battle, and for that valor I was welcomed into the camp of Godfrey de Bouillon, a Duke of Flanders. He was a good man. It was widely known that he actually came to the East to vanquish the infidels and not for gold alone. It was the happiest moment of my life at the time.

“Even though I never really met Godfrey and was just another knight lost in the ranks, I wore the white surcoat with the red Cross, and I could leave behind the rogues I had traveled with, even though I had become well acquainted with many of them. They were unwholesome, but they had accepted me and stood by my side.

“Even after I had started to hear the rumors that the vision of the saint and the holy spear were a fraud, a theatric to convince the men to fight, I maintained the belief that it was all for God. That I would find an inner voice that would tell me all was well. So I marched with my chin up.

“When we came to Jerusalem at last, we found the Holy City locked up, waiting for us. Our arrival was no secret. They offered us peace and guaranteed safety to all Christian pilgrims and worshippers in the future if we would just leave them alone. But the Franks wanted only unconditional surrender and the Holy City delivered into their hands. So we laid siege to her.

“Forty days we assaulted the walls, and they turned us back. But eventually, during that hot and dusty month, we won entrance. Some of us by deceit through the front gate, and some of us victoriously over the walls with Godfrey and Tancred. I was with that group. I was wild eyed, half starved, smudged with blood, soil and soot, and full of what I thought was God. As it turns out, I was just insane.”

Patrick grew silent. He had been recounting his tale to Katherina with full eye contact. But now he once again had slipped off into a faraway stare. His shoulders slumped, he swallowed hard.

They say when one is insane, that all becomes crystal clear within a certain frame...well, I certainly saw with clarity. A vision that was so clear it was painful, yet unreal, like a vivid nightmare. Nightmares have the grace of being just that, nightmares
―
dreams that are unpleasant, yet not real. I had, however, no such grace.

“After the initial assault into the city I fought hard side by side with my comrades. It was bloody, but it was also glorious as battle can be when you are filled with the lust for it. It is the lust that drives a man to become a career soldier. But once the Moslem soldiers were defeated, I thought we had won and the civilians that ran before us would eventually calm down and accept their new conquerors. But that was not the case. They fled screaming, and with good reason.

“I watched helplessly as my fellow Crusaders butchered civilians only for the sake of butchering them. Because they were there. They chased them down for sport, stabbed women and children, ripped babes from mothers and dashed them against stone walls, forced innocents to jump from windows and walls...” Patrick was swaying back and forth, but he didn’t seem to notice. There was once again a long moment of silence. Katherina tried to hide a grimace. “I didn’t understand. I stood dumbfounded. I had witnessed such behavior from the common rabble, and at first I thought they were the foot soldiers of God doing His unpleasant work to the non-Christians, but that attitude soon passed. The more time I spent in the Eastern lands, the more I came to understand that the Moslems were people like you or I
―
misguided perhaps in believing in what they believed
―
but certainly not deserving of this sort of torment. And these were knights and nobles committing these acts. I had been filled with the passion of battle, but not like that.

“Everywhere I went there was blood running like water in the streets and gutters. Heads and limbs were in piles...little child hands...bodies so full of arrows you couldn’t tell if they were man or woman, or sometimes even man or beast. This brand of Christian justice went on for a week. Beheadings and tortures followed by death by flame. Even the surviving Jews in the city were herded into the synagogue and the place burned to the ground. I couldn’t believe that I had been a part of it.

“By the end of the day, and still even the end of the week, I wandered the streets of Jerusalem. I was caked with dirt and blood. I was a ghost. My head ached constantly, I couldn’t think, and I felt hardly human. Who I was had long ago disappeared, I couldn’t even remember the old Patrick.

“I had left Eire to escape hopelessness and pain. To find myself, to find God. I felt cheated. I felt empty. I had gambled and lost by choosing this path in life, and nothing was going to change that
―
ever.”

Patrick was quiet for so long that Katherina wondered if he would talk again. She asked, “But you survived it and left. And you say that you are a better person for it.”

Patrick nodded. “A man found me wandering. He was an Englishman who had joined Godfrey at Antwerp. He too had heard the Pope’s call to liberate the Holy Lands, and he too had sought to make himself a name. Ultimately, he too felt as I, but he was not as devastated. He took me aside and cared for me. He brought me food and talked me back to my senses and made me human again. His name was David of York. He too was under Godfrey’s banner. We became fast friends and I joined his regiment in Godfrey’s knights. We stayed for the better part of a year, watching our own leader, Godfrey de Bouillon, being named the Protector of Jerusalem, and reaping the rewards from the status we received because of it.

“But we, and several others, were disenchanted by what had happened, and when we heard that the Moslems of Egypt were coming to fight us, we opted to leave, lest all this happen again. We had accumulated a modest amount of wealth and we left with it.

“On the journey back to Europe, I eventually did find something akin to that little voice inside my head that said all was well. But I can’t say that it is God. All I can figure is that such horror, such carnage can only be explained in the afterlife by God. I believe that he remains silent and watches us find our way blindly in the dark to Him and Salvation, and that is what the Crusade was about: the darkness we must cross on our way to Him.

“In the meantime, I must suffer the world and its heartaches. But as I have previously pointed out, knowing doesn’t always make the pain any less.”

Patrick truly was done speaking now. He toyed with a leftover bread crust while Katherina sat, thinking. Patrick turned his attention from the food to some standing stones nearby. He could tell that she still had more questions in her, and though the conversation had been liberating, it was also exhausting, and wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue.

She suddenly came forward and once again wrapped her legs about his torso and cradled his face. “I cannot say that I completely agree with your philosophy, but I understand you a great deal more now. But I still don’t understand why you distance yourself so from everyone. Why are you Sir Silence?”

Patrick reached up and stroked her hair as she had been doing to his. “I think perhaps it is because I know that everyone I meet will eventually abandon me.”

Katherina frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Just that: everyone who comes into my life enters only briefly, then departs. They win my confidence, my friendship, even my love, then they abruptly leave. I believe it is a curse that afflicts me like so many tragedies that commonly afflict others in this world. But this particular tragedy is my own personal curse, and I must bear it always. It is my test in life.”

Katherina’s frown turned to a whimsical smile. “You are so serious, it is amusing. I think only curse is your overactive imagination. I will never abandon you, even if I must go back home. Always be special friend to you, even if it must be through correspondence.”

“So you say,” Patrick said quickly, “but even if you have the best of intentions you are still only the tool of fate and will be used by it to visit this curse on me.”

Katherina gently slapped his head. “No, Irish-man, and I will prove to you by not doing that.”

Patrick shrugged. “I have heard that before, even from David of York.”

“No, no, no.” She stuck her tongue out at Patrick.

Patrick shrugged again, but now he was smiling. “Promise?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

The Irishman tickled her ribs and she giggled and squirmed.