Free The Scarlet Cross by Karleen Bradford

astonishment rose from the crowd gathered around him. Stephen drank it in. He looked at the people staring up at him. Father Benoit knelt, and one by one, others fell to their knees as well. With that, all Stephen’s doubts, all his fears, melted away. His hand that held the precious letter aloft steadied. Again, he felt the hot and burning power of God fill him and words poured out of him.
    “The Christ himself!” he cried. He blazed with passion. “He gave me this letter! He told me it was a summons from God. A summons that commanded me to preach to the children of France. To summon them to follow me.
    “‘Assemble a crusade of children, Stephen,’ He ordered me. ‘Without weapons, by your faith alone, you will win our holiest of cities back for Christianity.’”
    Stephen knew not for how long he preached but finally, once more, he was drained, with hardly strength enough to stand.
    Father Martin was quick to take his arm. The villagers remained silent for a long moment, then a babble arose as they surged around him, but Stephen could speak no more. He allowed Father Martin to lead him back to Father Benoit’s cottage. There a bed had been made for him close to the hearth.
    “The others?” he managed to ask. “The boys? And Angeline?”
    “They have been taken in by the townsfolk,” the priest answered. “Fret not about them. They will be well taken care of.”
    The next morning Stephen rose and broke his fast with the two priests after their prayers. When he left the cottage, Angeline, Renard, and the three younger children were waiting for him, along with several other boys. The villagers gathered to bid them farewell and pressed packets of bread and cheese on them. They took up their way again laden down with provisions.
    “Did I not say it was only one misguided priest?” Father Martin exulted. He was sipping from a skin of wine Father Benoit had given him and grew merrier and merrier as the day went on. “Only one poor soul who could not see the will of the Lord. I’ll wager you will not run up against another such as he during the remainder of our journey.”
    “Is Jerusalem very far then?” a voice asked from behind Stephen.
    Stephen turned to see the boy who had been sitting on the wall. He was a scrawny young lad of about ten or eleven years of age, so Stephen guessed. He walked with a limp.
    “What is your name?” Stephen asked.
    “I don’t have a name,” the boy answered. “People just call me le boiteux . The cripple. Because of my leg. I cannot work much, so I beg for my food. But I want to go with you and I can walk,” he hastened to add. “If it’s not too far.”
    “It is not too far,” Stephen answered. He felt light and full of confidence. Surely nothing was beyond him now. But as he spoke the words of encouragement to the boy he had a sudden twinge of uneasiness. How far was Jerusalem, really?
    Not even Father Martin could tell him that.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    “I talked long with Father Benoit last night,” Father Martin said to Stephen as they sat by a lingering fire. They had made camp again in a woods. The villagers had been generous and there had been vegetables enough to make a thick soup. The newcomers had bolted it down gratefully and, their bellies full, now lay sleeping around the embers in the warm spring night. Only Angeline was still awake. She sat slightly apart from Stephen and Father Martin. Dominic was snuggled up against her as usual. The two imps, Yves and Marc, lay close together not far away.
    Their faces looked so angelic in the flickering firelight, Stephen thought wryly, but those two were certainly not angels. They had been chased back to camp only that day by an irate villager who claimed he had caught them stealing turnips from his small garden.
    “We have food enough,” Stephen had protested when he chastised them. “There is no need for you to steal. Why did you do it?”
    They had not answered him, merely hung their heads. He would have thought