Crispin_ At the Edge of the World - Avi [21]
For a moment he said nothing. Then he said, “The girl’s marked, unwanted. Feared. What’s feared is abused. She’d perish. She must stay with us. Do you object?”
“No, no,” I said in haste. “Not at all. But, Bear, where will we go?”
“To the southern coast, to the sea.”
Remembering his words about the great ocean, something in me stirred. “And when we do …”
“It’s easier to find employment in coastal towns. Men come and go. Perhaps, as well, men who’ve seen a bigger world have bigger hearts. Hopefully they’ll be more accepting than peasant folk. We need some generosity. Let’s pray to Saint Lufthildis that he’ll protect us. He can be kind to those who are homeless.”
“Are we homeless, then?”
“Perhaps all are,” said Bear with a sigh. After some brooding silence he said, “When I was a child, there was a song often sung to me.” Lifting his voice, he began to sing:
Oh child, you are a pilgrim horn in sin
Who must forever wander in
This world where death flies out
of darkling doors
To cast down Adam’s kin,
as he has done so oft before.
For Adam, who, though once devout,
In God’s Eden of bright delight
Caused eternal suffering throughout,
By taking up the serpent’s gift of
never-ending night.
Then with a yawn, he said, “I’m exhausted. That running has heated my fever.”
“Bear,” I said, “will we never find some peace?”
“Every night,” he murmured, “gives way to day.”
“Does it always come?”
But Bear made no reply. I supposed he’d fallen asleep.
I—unable to get the images of Aude’s slaying out of my head—could not sleep. I still felt wretched that I had once thought so badly of the crone, and of Troth.
“Blessed Saint Giles,” I whispered, “it’s hard to be a man.” Full of remorse, I reached out and gently set my hand to Troth’s back.
I did not know if she slept. Even so, I said: “Troth, in the name of my God, I beg your forgiveness for all my unworthy thoughts, and herewith make a sacred vow by my Sacred Mother that I will treat you with true kindness, that I will be a brother to you for all my days forever and anon.”
To my surprise, she stirred, turned, and took my hand that had rested on her back, and set her broken mouth to it in a kiss. My heart swelled. I thought: though broken, a mouth cannot bestow such a forgiving blessing and be evil.
“Amen,” I whispered to her.
She turned away. No more was said.
Greatly wearied, I made myself go on my knees and prayed desperately to my Saint Giles. I prayed for Aude’s soul. I prayed too, for Troth’s. I prayed, of course, for Bear.
By then I could hardly keep my eyes open. Even as I drifted off, I realized I’d yet to pray for my own keep. “Saint Giles!” I cried to the all-embracing night. “Help me have an open heart. Help me know my ignorance.”
But mine was not an easy sleep. I had an ill-omened dream in which Aude’s eyes—the blind one and the good—gazed at me from some distant place. In my troubled fancies I knew she was seeing two futures, the good and the bad. Which future, I kept calling, would be mine?
And in my dream I heard Aude’s mumbling voice. “Crispin,” she was saying, “take heed. Be a man.”
“Have I not saved Troth? What more need I do to become a man?” I cried.
The dream gave no answer.
17
W E WOKE to a misty dawn. Like limp-winged moths emerging from cocoons, we tried to shrug out of our sleepiness. Once alert, we offered our prayers—I don’t know if Troth made any—and then continued on, trudging beneath the crowded trees.
Troth went first, small, dressed in rags. Next came great Bear in his rough-made garment, without shoes, red beard unkempt, his two-pronged hat with bells a-jangle. I came last. I had my tunic, much torn. My hair had become long again. And filthy. On my back was our mostly empty sack.
An odd threesome we were!
By midmorning we reached the forest’s edge. As if a veil was being lifted, the bosky dimness melted. We stood upon a bluff and gazed upon unending rolling hills of new green, broken occasionally by clumps of leafy trees. Grass