Free Crusade of Tears: A Novel of the Children's Crusade by C. D. Baker Page B

as if an unseen hand had hushed all tongues and turned all faces now fixed on the ambassadors from heaven.
    The archbishop stood tall and erect in the ample, silken robes which flowed to the tops of his black shoes. Large, bright red crosses were sewn on each breast of his yellow chasuble and a dark green stole with a white underlining hung neatly across his shoulders. His brass headpiece reflected points of light from the sun-rays beaming through the windows, conferring on him an ethereal authority. The legate, an honorary appointment from the diocese of Cologne, stood by his side in equal splendor. He fixed his hands tightly to his red stole and arched his back forward as he peered into heaven.
    His Grace raised his golden crosier over his flock and pronounced a blessing to all gathered, then stood quietly to appraise the congregation. The fix of his steely eyes and the remarkable potency of his silence captivated prince and peasant alike. The souls gathered before him waited anxiously, filled with an anticipation that nearly begged aloud for him to begin.
    Then, at last, almost as if it were an act of mercy, the archbishop began to speak. “Come, my children, listen to us, for we’ll instruct you in the fear of the Lord. The Evil One is in thy midst and you have suffered most terribly at his filthy hands. For that, you have my heartfelt pity and the merciful sympathy of our Lord. And He shall lead you to His bosom.
    “I see in thy faces that you be filled with dread for thine own plight, but what terror do you counsel for the sad course of others? Shame be on thy heads. This selfsame wicked dark Prince of the Air prowls all the world. Even as I speak, he leisures in Palestine, the very land of our Lord. You may weep for thy troubles, but for six generations the strong hearts of Christendom have yielded life, limb, and fortune to restore the Land of Promise to the People of the Covenant.
    “While you rest in thy peaceful valley, our Lord God pleads, ‘My land cries out against me and all its furrows are wet with tears. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts, they invaded my land to ravage it.’
    “Shame on those who sing songs to God while these locusts, these Saracen infidels, these children of the Wicked One, desecrate the very soil that Christ Himself walked upon.” The archbishop looked to the heavens, then backed away to leave the pulpit to the legate, a large man of middling years named Paulus who once hailed from Hohenstaufen—the homeland of the old emperor, Barbarossa.
    “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,” Paulus cried, “may my right hand forget, may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not consider Jerusalem my utmost joy. The great fortress of God is abandoned, the noisy city is deserted, citadel and watchtower have become a wasteland forever. Our God’s house has become the delight of donkeys, a pasture for flocks.”
    The legate drew a deep breath and bellowed, “For the Lord says, ‘The land I have given to Abraham and Isaac, I also give you, my children. They shall neither hunger nor thirst. Nor shall the desert heat or sun beat upon them. You shall be led beside springs of water.’
    “Dear children, please come and I’ll turn my mountains into roads and my highways shall be raised up. You shall come from afar … from the north.”
    Paulus softened his tone and turned a kindly, gentle eye out the windows and onto the children scattered throughout the silent courtyard. He motioned them to the bishop’s guards. “Bring them to me. Suffer the children to come unto me.” He waited patiently, like an indulgent grandfather on a summer Sabbath. The footmen hurried throughout the courtyard and beckoned the wide-eyed children to hurry to the nave where they slowly, almost fearfully, forced themselves between the hips of the astonished adults pressed in around them.
    “Komme, meine Kinder ,” cried the legate. “Come, all my children, and gather