beauty, and I was much noticed by the students and the young guildsmen of the city. Yet being poor and
without a dowry, I got no offers, or at least no offers that a virtuous young woman could accept. Indeed,
the most persistent of my followers was the owner of the brothel, and his proposal was for a position that
I did not desire. Such a life is sinful, dirty, and short!
Then I met a young student who had recently taken Holy Orders and would soon be returning to his
native land of Poland. He asked my mother for my hand, and at first she turned him down, for a priest
could not possibly marry. It was this fact that had caused all our difficulties in the first place! But he
persisted and proved to her that the Gregorian reforms that forbade the marriage of the clergy had not yet
been ratified in Poland and, further, that they were not likely to be. Thus, my mother blessed our marriage
as the best that I could do without any dowry at all. The very day of our small wedding, she left us to join
a convent, being tired of this world and its pain.
As the rent was not paid on my mother’s old room, I spent my wedding night with my new husband in
his bunk in a student dormitory. Nothing took place that night, but I put this down to his shyness,
considering that there were other students in the same room. And truthfully, I was not precisely sure at
that tender age just what should have taken place, anyway.
It was early spring, and we left the next morning to go to Poland on foot, for my young husband was
almost as poor as I was. We traveled all spring and summer across France, over the many Germanies,
through Bohemia, and into Silesia, that westernmost of Polish duchies. We made the trip barefoot for
lack of the price of shoes, and indeed we were often hungry, yet as I look back on it, we had a good time.
We were young, we were in love, and we were traveling through a world that was forever new.
Yet our love was not physical in the carnal sense of the word. John did not seem to want to talk of it, and
I decided that he did not want to burden us with a child until such time as he could properly support it.
This made his actions seem pure and noble to me, and of course I did not press him further.
At length, in the fall, we got to the city of Wroclaw and reported to the bishop there at his palace.
Compared to that of my grandfather, it was an inferior place, yet for two ragged and barefoot travelers, it
seemed sumptuous indeed!
The Bishop of Wroclaw was a pompous old man, with a character far different from that of my beloved
grandfather. He acted not at all pleased with his two new ragged guests. Indeed, we seemed to embarrass
him. He gave us each a new set of cheap clothes and sent my husband on to a new post within days.
This was at the new town of Okoitz, which Count Lambert was then just starting to build. When we
arrived, there was nothing but a clearing in the woods with a half-finished wooden wall and a few huts
built against it. And in this we had to survive a cold Polish winter!
My husband still did not properly consummate our marriage, yet it seemed to me that to endure
pregnancy and childbirth in those difficult conditions would be dangerous indeed and that poor John was
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