The Children's Crusade by Henry Treece

Author:Henry Treece
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Childrens
ISBN: 9780140302141
Published: 1959-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18. Storm and treachery

Whatever the ardours of the long and dis-spiriting march through France, those of the voyage were many times worse. Herded together like young cattle, the children suffered hunger, thirst and sickness. By night they lay huddled in heaps on the filthy deck; by day they gathered round the bulwarks, gazing until their eyes hurt in the harsh sunlight towards the far horizon.

Most of the children suffered their privations almost gladly, thinking that Stephen’s prophecy was being fulfilled, thinking too that their sufferings on the journey were planned by God to test their faith. Each curse from the rough seamen, each piece of mouldy black bread or dish of greasy soup, they regarded as a stepping-stone towards the state of sanctity. And even when any of their number were whipped by a too-hasty Captain, their fellows saw this as a necessary condition of their good fortune in being transported to the land of Heart’s Desire.

Only those aboard the Sancta Maria had seen that the piper had deserted them, only they had seen money changing hands on the quayside, and had guessed what that indicated. And of these observers, Geoffrey and Gerard were perhaps the most acute.

‘If I were alone, or if Alys were with me,’ said Geoffrey one night, as the Sancta Maria headed due south, ‘I would fling a plank overboard and leap after it. Someone would pick us up, surely ?’

The young priest smiled grimly and then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘other wolves, perhaps, as rapacious as these in whose care we now find ourselves. No there is no way, but to trust God and to go forward, wherever our pattern takes us.’

Then something happened which must have convinced many of the hapless passengers that God had become displeased with them.

Some days out from Marseilles, a great storm blew up suddenly. Thunder roared like a thousand lions and lightning flashed so constantly and with such a blinding brilliance that it seemed like day, though it was midnight. The mast of one of the foremost ships was struck, and fell, cloven, with all its sails and cordage, upon the thickly clustered children who kneeled, praying beneath it.

Then a monstrous rushing wind came out of the west and blew the helpless ships off their course, heeling them over until the children could no longer keep their positions, but were rolled like bales or kegs this way and that, unable to help themselves.

The following morning as the storm blew itself out and as dawn broke beneath the leaden clouds, Geoffrey and Gerard, still clinging, though with numb fingers and pain-racked muscles, to the rigging, saw a sight which brought tears to their smarting eyes.

Two of the ships were no more. One lay, keel uppermost and shattered, on the rocks of a small island to the east. The other was settling slowly in deep water, its sails now floating idly on the wash, its many passengers scattered momentarily on the surface of the waters like seeds upon a pool.

Though they were a long distance away, Geoffrey thought he could hear many of them shouting for help.

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