A year later, somewhere in Macedonia

The heavy-bearded knight reared his mount over us on the steep ridge. “March, you princesses, or the only Turkish blood you’ll see will be at the end of a mop.”

March …We had been marching for months now. Months so long and grueling, so lacking in all provision, I could mark them only by the sores oozing on my feet, or the lice crawling in my beard.

We had marched across Europe and through the Alps. At first in tight formation, cheered in every town we passed, our tunics clean, with bright red crosses, helmets gleaming in the sun.

Then, into the craggy mountains of Serbia -each step slow and treacherous, every ridge ripe with ambush. I watched as many a loyal soul, eager to fight for the glory of God, was swept screaming into vast crevices or dropped in his tracks by Serb or Magyar arrows a thousand miles before the first sign of a Turk.

All along we were told that Peter’s army was months ahead of us, slaughtering infidels and hoarding all the spoils, while our nobles fought and bickered among themselves, and the rest of us trudged like beaten livestock in the blistering heat and bargained for what little food there was.

[27] I’ll be back in a y ear, I had promised Sophie. Now that was just a mocking refrain in my dreams. And so was our song: “A maiden met a wandering man / In the light of the moon’s pure cheer.”

Along the way, I had made two lasting friends. One was Nicodemus, an old Greek, schooled in the sciences and languages, who managed to keep up his steady stride despite a satchel heavy with tracts of Aristotle, Euclid, and Boethius.