The Noble Heart Part 3

Claudia discovers her Noble Heart Heritage.

Part 3

 

        Roger stood on the hill and looked back at the empty cottage that had been his home for so long.  A wind whistled around him and through the trees.  An accepting sense of loneliness filled him.  He mourned Anna’s passing in his own silent way.  It surprised him that he would grieve for this woman that he’d not known for all that long.  Even still, she had managed to touch something within his heart and move him to agree to take her daughter.  He bent down and took Claudia’s hand.  “Are you ready to leave?” he asked her.

       She nodded her head inside the hood of cloak.  She was solemn, but did not cry as they started walking.  So much sadness for a little one to bear he thought as they left.  He took Claudia not only away from the only family she’d know, but away from her heritage and her past.  She was rootless now just like him.

        Roger took Claudia first through France and then onto England.  They sailed from England back down the coast to Spain and through the Straights of Gibraltar to Italy and Greece.  Many people took them in giving them shelter and food as Anna had done for Roger originally.  To avoid telling them a long, complicated story Roger usually just told people that Claudia was his daughter and that her mother had died.  She was usually quiet among the strangers and did not talk often to them.

          

       Claudia, of course, is me.  I remember little of my childhood.  It becomes a confusing mixture of faces and places.  Despite the wonderful things I saw, I was terribly lonely.  Roger tried to be good to me and give me everything that I needed, but he just couldn’t be my father and mother or the siblings I never had.  I longed for a family to call me own.  Most of all I needed someone I could open up to and trust with all my feelings.  Roger had a difficult time being open and he didn’t exactly encourage me to tell him everything either.  Both of us existed in our own little worlds�"separate yet moving together.

      When I was twelve, nine years from the time that I began traveling with him, he left me with an ex-lover of his.  We met with her at a manor just outside of Berlin.  Her name was Dagmar Scholtz.  Dagmar was a strong woman, more warrior than Lady of the Court.

      “It will be best if I leave and you stay here for a while,” he told me.

      “No!” I cried defiantly.

      “Claudia, you have to trust me on this.  Don’t you trust me?”

      “Of course I do,” I replied softly.

      “I cannot give you what you need.  Dagmar can.  I will be back to check in on you from time to time.  I am not disappearing forever.”

       “Stay here with me,” I pleaded.   Being with him in his silence was better than being without him I thought.

        He embraced me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.  He looked like he was about to cry, but he never did.  “I will see you.”  With that, he turned and left.  He just walked right out of my life as easily as he’d walked into it years ago.  I was left virtually alone in the dark hall.  I cried and cried that day, but it did not bring him back.

        Dagmar left me alone in my new room for awhile, but the next day she came to me and put me to work.  “No use in crying,” she told me.  “Use your sadness to make you work harder and be stronger.  Being sad is unproductive when there are chores to be done!”

        So I worked.  I fed the horses, mucked the stalls, cleaned the house and helped cooked meals.  Dagmar treated me more like a servant than a daughter, but I know that she still cared.  Occasionally, she took me out horseback riding and taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow.  I learned how to sword fight and all kind of useful things that most women never learn. 

        Despite her practicality and the education I received while there, I was still greatly unhappy.  I longed to be free once again and roam until I found some place I belonged better.  I did not belong with Dagmar or anywhere it seemed.  I wiled away the hours trying to figure out what I should do and where I might go to get away.

        Then the answer found me out.  He was a rich man by named of Sir Raymond Goering.  He was intrigued by me when he came to visit Dagmar.  He came to gain Dagmar’s favor and some of her supplies.  He was fighting an all important political battle.  Though he had taken Dagmar as a lover before, it was the shy fifteen year old girl who interested him this time around.  Dagmar did not care that he preferred me to her and insisted that he take me with him when he left.  Raymond asked me if I wanted to go with him, be his lover.  I agreed to go with him willing, but I got the feeling I would have been forced to go even if I’d rejected his offer. 

         The two years I spent with Sir Raymond were one I wish to forget quickly.  Though he called me his lover I often felt like his slave.  His wife never seemed to care when he slept with me instead of her.  I suspected that she had lovers of her own as well.  In any case, I didn’t see her much even though I lived with the both of them.  She remained distant and aloof.  I had more contact with her handmaiden Matilda than I did her.  I had my own room in their rather large manor in the mountains.  I was free to roam about the house, which was nice.  It was the fact that I was at Lord Raymond’s beck and call.  What he wished, I had to do.  It was worse than being with Dagmar in many ways.  I would have never agreed to go if I’d known what I was in for.

       Why did I not just runaway?  I was too scared to wonder the world alone.  I wanted to feel like our unions were more out of love for me than out of pure lust.  Being abandoned by Roger was the worst thing I’d ever been through and I did not wish for Lord Raymond to leave me either no matter how poorly he treated me. 

        

       Then from these nightmarish days came a light.  Raymond had a visitor that changed my life.  Lewis Bernhard came to visit.  His name and face were some how familiar to me, though I couldn’t figure out why at first.  I watched Lewis dine with Raymond and talk politics by the fire.  When Lewis came up the stairs to bed, I scurried into my room trying to cover up the fact that I’d been eavesdropping. 

       It didn’t work, for Lewis saw me anyway.  “Hello,” he called out into the empty hallway.

       I stepped out from around the corner shyly and said meekly, “Hello.”

       “Who are you? I saw you earlier and I thought you looked so familiar somehow.”

       “I am Claudia Bernhard.”

       “Where is your family? Are they from around here?”

       “I do not know.  I am an orphan.”

       “My name is Lewis Bernhard,” he said extending his hand.  He was quiet and yet possessed a comforting openness about him.  “Why were you running away and hiding from me?”

        “I shouldn’t be here.  Lord Raymond might need me,” I said backing away like a frightened animal.

        “Nonsense.  He will not mind if we take a walk and talk.”

        “Why would you wish to speak to me?” I said disbelievingly.

        As we began down the long dark corridor together he replied, “You are probably the only one that I have spoken with that does not run on and on about trifle things like that fashion of the day, Court gossip, politics or religion. Tell me about your life.  Tell me something interesting.  I would very much like to hear.”  

         “I’ve traveled….” I began.  I told him of the many places I’d been and the things I’d seen.  He listened intently, asking many questions.  We ended up outside in the garden walking in the most magical twilight.  After a long time I finished, “And so I ended up here with Lord Raymond.”

        “Oh how sad!” he exclaimed.

        “Sad?” I said in surprised.  “Why?”

        “You had so much at home and on your travels and you were forced to give that up.”

        “I was miserable traveling with Roger,” I protested.  “I longed for my mother and father everyday, but I knew they were gone and I didn’t know how to get back to our cottage.”

        “Do you have any idea where your mother and father lived?”

        “Well, Roger spoke of a village in Sarrland.  We lived on a hill with a valley on one side and the forest on the other.  That is all I know.”

        “That is my home.  Do you remember the names of your mother and father or anyone else in your family?”
         “No…Well, I could never be sure, but I think Roger mentioned my mother’s name.  It was Anna I think.”

         “My Aunt’s name was Anna, but she died nearly fourteen years ago.”

         “That is when my mother died and I started traveling!” Claudia exclaimed excitedly.

         “Could it be?” Lewis asked stopping and turning toward me.  He took my hands in his and looked into my eyes.  “You even look like her.”

         “You knew my mother?” I asked confused.

         “Yes, my dear Claudia.  You are my long lost cousin. I cannot believe I found you after all these years! It is positively amazing.  Your mother was married to my Uncle Jeffery.  When both of them died a stranger took their little girl with him to raise.  Her dying wish for Roger to take you on his travels seemed quite strange to our family. We never understood why she didn’t let her parents raise you.”

         “My mother gave me to a stranger? Why would she do such a thing?”

          Lewis was baffled by my anger.  “You do not understand.  She told us she did it out of love.  We thought the best thing for you would be to stay with family, but she felt the best thing for you was a chance to travel like her and Jeffery never got the chance to.”  Lewis sat me down and told me the story of how my father and mother met and fell in love.  It is the very same story that I have retold to you.

          “I had no idea how or why I came to travel with Roger.  I simply felt unloved and unwanted.  I was bitter in thinking of how little my parents must have loved each other and me, but now I see I mistaken.   Thank you dear cousin for helping me see the truth.  Your story has changed my life.  It gives me great hope and inspiration.  It gives me the strength I never thought I possessed before.”

          That night Lewis took me away from Lord Raymond and back to our beloved grandparents.  Going home was an incredible experience.  I finally had a past and some roots.  Lewis and his wife Geneva took me in and I stayed with them for over a year.  I was grateful and, for the first time, truly happy there.  It was after that joyous year with my family that I realized that I needed to make my own life and my own path.  That is what Anna and Jeffery would have wanted for me.  

          At nineteen, I left my wonderful cousin’s to discover who I really was and where I really belonged.  I found myself in Paris a few months later.  After some difficult times on the street, Pierre found me.  He brought me off the street and taught me many things.  I learned French, English, Greek and Latin as well as how to cook and attend to the sick.  Pierre was a well known physician in Paris and he was quite wealthy.  He lived in a huge chateau and attended to all the ladies of the court.  It took not quite a year for Pierre to ask me to marry him.  Though he was twenty years my senior, I agreed.  His poor wife had died in childbirth some years ago and he was thrilled to find love again.  We were married in the church and were blessed with three lovely daughters in the years that followed.  

 

         So here I am sitting this beautiful afternoon thinking over the past and dreaming of what it must have been like then.  Anna and Jeffery had Noble Hearts and did what they could to help others.  Because of their efforts, I have been inspired to follow in their footsteps.  I hope that when I die I will be remembered for my kindness and generosity.  More than anything, I would hope that my three wonderful little girls will continue the tradition of the Noble Heart.  Nobleness after all, is not something you are born into, but something that you find in your heart and grows over time.