Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 7 Age
When Gailis returned to the village again, he noticed that the bloodstains had been washed away.

Although many houses are still quite dilapidated, at least at a glance it only seems too deserted, and one would not associate it with the devastation and corpses strewn all over the place just two days ago.

At the same time, because of the torture and disaster they had experienced, the original family structure in the Skar village had been completely broken.

The more than 40 people left behind either lost their parents, their husbands, or their wives. Dozens of people could not even form a complete family.

With the original family structure broken, Gellis simply relied on his high prestige to make all the houses in the village public property, then divided the survivors into several teams and redistributed the houses according to their living needs.

The surviving men were in a separate team, minors over the age of seven were divided into two teams according to gender, and women with children under the age of seven were also divided into two teams because of their larger number.

Among these five teams, Garys asked the adult men and women to elect captains to manage themselves. As for minors over seven years old, he asked John to take a servant to look after them to avoid any conflicts among the little ones.

As for the knights and servants, Garys directly assigned them to his own command. The wounded among them were allowed to recover, while the healthy ones were either assigned to handle logistics or take on the duties of patrolling and keeping watch.

In addition, due to the existing conditions, these sixty people could not be divided into high and low classes when eating, and could only squat together and eat from the big pot.

The cooks who were originally servants did their best to stew the food they could find into several large pots of thick soup, which was then distributed among the respective teams.

Although some knights or servants were not used to eating with the peasants, given their current state, they all knew that they were not qualified to be picky.

After all, if it weren't for Gailis, no matter they were knights, squires, or villagers in the village, their best fate would be to be sold as slaves, and the worst would be to die directly.

But no matter how the teams are divided, there is one person that no one can ignore, and no one knows which team to put him in.

Even though she had changed into simple clothes and was trying to blend into the queue with her own plate to get food, she was still the focus of everyone's attention and was given special looks wherever she went.

After all, she is the half-sister of the legendary monarch "The Leper King". Her father is the former King Amauri I who belonged to the House of Anjou, and her mother is a member of the Roman royal family, the Komnenos.

She was the person to whom Gellis was now theoretically loyal—Isabella of Anjou-Jerusalem.

As soon as Isabella stood there, her fair skin made her stand out from the other people around her, and her light brown hair took on a golden-red luster in the sunset, shining brightly and hard to ignore.

When Garys came to the team, he could feel that the atmosphere was a little subtle.

If order is to be maintained, then Isabella is just one of the crowd, nothing special about her, but the long-standing class divisions make it difficult for everyone to ignore her royal bloodline.

Even though Isabella tried to fit in with the group, she could always feel that she was being treated specially.

This vague sense of distance, which could be called respect, made Isabella feel powerless. This was the situation she wanted to escape from in the past, but it always followed her.

When Isabella noticed Gailis approaching the team, her eyes looked at him for help.

"Well, eat as usual. Nowadays, no one here can be treated specially, including me."

As Gailis spoke, the slightly subtle atmosphere was replaced by a more fanatical religious piety. Even though Gailis said that no one should be treated specially, he actually just shifted the focus of the scene from Isabella to himself.

After all, Isabella was just a secular princess, but Gaillis's status in everyone's heart was catching up with that of Jesus, the Messiah.

After everyone received their food, they ate separately. During this time, John led his men to patrol to prevent people from snatching food.

However, perhaps because there were not many people and they were familiar with each other, and because everyone survived the disaster, the bad situation that Gailis had anticipated did not occur.

After receiving her food, Isabella moved directly to Garys and rubbed her hand against his shoulder. The close contact of the girl made Garys tense up and seem at a loss.

"Have you been avoiding me these days?" Isabella asked before she had even taken a few bites of her meal, and the complaint in her tone could not be concealed no matter what.

Gailis didn't know how to answer. He had indeed been avoiding Isabella for the past two days and had not had any private communication with the adult he nominally served.

After all, after integrating the memories of the previous life, many cognitions have changed, the first of which is the issue of age.

The age of Gailis's body now is not very old, only seventeen years old, but he looks a little precocious because of the hardships he has experienced in the Holy Land for a long time.

Isabella, on the other hand, was even younger, currently three years younger than him.

Before Garys integrated his past life memories, the three-year age difference was still considered within the range of peers.

When Gellis was undergoing knight training in the royal palace of Jerusalem, he met Isabella and they were childhood playmates.

Therefore, not long after Gellis was knighted by the Leper King, he was assigned by the Leper King to serve Isabella. After the Leper King passed away, Gellis naturally swore allegiance to Isabella.

There was actually nothing much to say about this process, but after integrating the memories of his past life, Gailis clearly felt that something was wrong.

The slight difference is Isabella's attitude towards Gaillis. Obviously, she is more than just a childhood playmate or a subordinate knight.

In the 12th century AD, political marriages between nobles could lower the marriage age to minors. As a result, children's childhoods became shorter and shorter, and the pressure of life forced everyone to mature as quickly as possible.

Childhood sweethearts should have been the happiest time of their childhood, but in this environment where they were forced to mature early, some different emotions were brewing, especially since the girl lost her father at a young age and her mother remarried early, so she was alone in the palace and lacked playmates.

The Garys before awakening his past life memories was no different from a piece of wood, so naturally he had no obvious perception. But now, as long as Garys recalled those memories in his mind, he could feel that strong sense of attachment.

Perhaps this kind of thing was very common in this era. After all, even Isabella's mother was married at the age of twelve.

Thinking of the intimate gestures Isabella had shown him in his memory, Gailis felt a little uncomfortable. After all, he could not integrate well into this era and could only yearn for change.

Therefore, Garys has not figured out how to deal with the relationship between them in the past few days.

(End of this chapter)