I rushed to the second-floor window of the inn I looked after with my wife, Sophie. People were running into the square, still carrying their tools. “What’s going on? Who needs help?”they shouted.

Then Antoine, who farmed a plot by the river, galloped over the bridge aboard his mule, pointing back toward the road. “They’re coming! They’re almost here!”

From the east, I heard the loudest chorus of voices, seemingly raised as one. I squinted through the trees and felt my jaw drop. “Jesus, I’m dreaming,”I said to myself. A peddler with a [10] cart was considered an event here. I blinked at the sight, not once but twice.

It was the greatest multitude I had ever seen! Jammed along the narrow road into town, stretching out as far as the eye could see.

“Sophie, come quick, now,” I yelled. “You’re not going to believe this.”

My wife of three years hurried to the window, her yellow hair pinned up for the workday under a white cap. “Mother of God, Hugh…”

“It’s an army,” I muttered, barely able to believe my eyes. “The Army of the Crusade.”

Chapter 2

EVEN IN VEILLE DU PÈRE, word had reached us of the Pope’s call. We had heard that masses of men were leaving their families, taking the Cross, as nearby as Avignon. And here they were… the army of Crusaders, marching through Veille du Père!

But what an army! More of a rabble, like one of those multitudes prophesied in Isaiah or John. Men, women, children, carrying clubs and tools straight from home. And it was vast-thousands of them! Not fitted out with armor or uniforms, but shabbily, with red crosses either painted or sewn onto plain tunics. And at the head of this assemblage… not some trumped-up duke or king in crested mail and armor sitting imperiously atop a massive charger. But a little man in a homespun monk’s robe, barefoot, bald, with a thatched crown, plopped atop a simple mule.