The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade
by Charlotte M. Yonge · English · Gutenberg #3696 · 391,948 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
Release date: January 1, 2003 [eBook #3696]
Most recently updated: July 28, 2019
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3696
Credits: Transcribed from the 1909 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINCE AND THE PAGE: A STORY OF THE LAST CRUSADE ***
Transcribed from the 1909 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
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[Picture: Book cover]
THE
PRINCE AND THE PAGE
A STORY OF THE LAST CRUSADE
* * * * *
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE,”
ETC.
* * * * *
WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY ADRIAN STOKES
* * * * *
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1909
* * * * *
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C. AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
_First Edition printed_ 1865 (_Pott_ 8_vo_). _Reprinted_ 1873, 1875,
1877, 1878, 1881
(_Globe_ 8_vo_), _March and November_ 1883, 1886. _Second Edition_ 1891
(_Crown_ 8_vo_)
_Reprinted_ 1893, 1898, 1899, 1901, 1903, 1906, 1909.
_Shilling Edition_, 1908.
[Picture: Frontispiece]
PREFACE
IN these days of exactness even a child’s historical romance must point
to what the French term its _pièces justficatives_. We own that ours do
not lie very deep. The picture of Simon de Montfort drawn by his wife’s
own household books, as quoted by Mrs. Everett Green in her Lives of the
Princesses, and that of Edward I. in Carte’s History, and more recently
in the Greatest of the Plantagenets, furnished the two chief influences
of the story. The household accounts show that Earl Simon and Eleanor of
England had five sons. Henry fell with his father at Evesham. Simon and
Guy deeply injured his cause by their violence, and after holding out
Kenilworth against the Prince, retired to the Continent, where they
sacrilegiously murdered Henry, son of the King of the Romans—a crime so
much abhorred in Italy that Dante represents himself as meeting them in
torments in the _Inferno_, not however before Guy had become the founder
of the family of the Counts of Monforte in the Maremma. Richard, the
fourth son, appears in the household books as possessing dogs, and having
garments bought for him; but his history has not been traced after his
mother left England. The youngest son, Amaury, obtained the hereditary
French possessions of the family, and continued the line of Montfort as a
French subject. Eleanor, the only daughter, called the Demoiselle de
Montfort, married, as is well known, the last native prince of Wales, and
died after a few years.
The adventure of Edward with the outlaw of Alton Wood is one of the stock
anecdotes of history, and many years ago the romance of the encounter led
the author to begin a tale upon it, in which the outlaw became the
protector of one of the proscribed family of Montfort. The commencement
was placed in one of the manuscript magazines which are so often the
amusement of a circle of friends. It was not particularly correct in its
details, and the hero bore the peculiarly improbable name of Wilfred (by
which he has since appeared in the _Monthly Packet_). The story slept
for many years in MS., until further reading and thought had brought
stronger interest in the period, and for better or for worse it was taken
in hand again. Joinville, together with the authorities quoted by
Sismondi, assisted in picturing the arrival of the English after the
death of St. Louis, and the murder of Henry of Almayne is related in all
crusading histories; but for Simon’s further career, and for his
implication in the attempt on Edward’s life at Acre, the author is alone
responsible, taking refuge in the entire uncertainty that prevails as to
the real originator of the crime, and perhaps an apology is likewise due
to Dante for having reversed his doom.
For the latter part of the story, the old ballad of The Blind Beggar of
Bethnal Green, gives the framework. That ballad is believed to be
Elizabethan in date, and the manners therein certainly are scarcely
accordant with the real thirteenth century, and still less with our
notions of the days of chivalry. Some liberties therefore have been
taken with it, the chief of them being that Bessee is not permitted to go
forth to seek her fortune in the inn at Romford, and the readers are
entreated to believe that the alteration was made by the traditions which
repeated Henry de Montfort’s song.
It was the late Hugh Millar who alleged that the huge stone under which
Edward sleeps in Westminster Abbey agrees in structure with no rocks
nearer than those whence the mighty stones of the Temple at Jerusalem
were hewn, and there is no doubt that earth and stones were frequently
brought by crusaders from the Holy Land with a view to the hallowing of
their own tombs.
The author is well aware that this tale has all the incorrectnesses and
inconsistencies that are sure to attend a historical tale; but the dream
that has been pleasant to dream may be pleasant to listen to; and there
can be no doubt that, in spite of all inevitable faults, this style of
composition does tend to fix young people’s interest and attention on the
scenes it treats of, and to vivify the characters it describes; and if
this sketch at all tends to prepare young people’s minds to look with
sympathy and appreciation on any of the great characters of our early
annals, it will have done at least one work.
_December_ 12_th_, 1865.
CHAPTER I
THE STATELY HUNTER
“‘Now who are thou of the darksome brow
Who wanderest here so free?’
“‘Oh, I’m one that will walk the green green woods,
Nor ever ask leave of thee.’”—S. M.
A FINE EVENING—six centuries ago—shed a bright parting light over Alton
Wood, illuminating the gray lichens that clung to the rugged trunks of
the old oak trees, and shining on the smoother bark of the graceful
beech, with that sidelong light that, towards evening, gives an especial
charm to woodland scenery. The long shadows lay across an open green
glade, narrowing towards one end, where a path, nearly lost amid dwarf
furze, crested heather, and soft bent-grass, led towards a hut, rudely
constructed of sods of turf and branches of trees, whose gray crackling
foliage contrasted with the fresh verdure around. There was no endeavour
at a window, nor chimney; but the door of wattled boughs was carefully
secured by a long twisted withe.
A halbert, a broken arrow, a deer-skin pegged out on the ground to dry, a
bundle of faggots, a bare and blackened patch of grass, strewn with wood
ashes, were tokens of recent habitation, though the reiterations of the
nightingale, the deep tones of the blackbird and the hum of insects, were
the only sounds that broke the stillness.
Suddenly the silence was interrupted by a clear, loud, ringing whistle,
repeated at brief intervals and now and then exchanged for the
call—“Leonillo! Leon!” A footstep approached, rapidly overtaken and
passed by the rushing gallop of a large animal; and there broke on the
scene a large tawny hound, prancing, bounding, and turning round
joyfully, pawing the air, and wagging his tail, in welcome to the figure
who followed him.
This was a youth thirteen years old, wearing such a dress as was usual
with foresters—namely, a garment of home-spun undyed wool, reaching to
the knee, and there met by buskins of deer-skin, with the dappled hair
outside; but the belt which crossed one shoulder was clasped with gold,
and sustained a dagger, whose hilt and sheath were of exquisite
workmanship. The cap on his head was of gray rabbit-skin, but a heron’s
plume waved in it; the dark curling locks beneath were carefully
arranged; and the port of his head and shoulders, the mould of his limbs,
the cast of his features, and the fairness of his complexion, made his
appearance ill accord with the homeliness of his garb. In one hand he
carried a bow over his shoulder; in the other he held by the ears a
couple of dead rabbits, with which he playfully tantalized the dog,
holding them to his nose, and then lifting them high aloft, while the
hound, perfectly entering into the sport, leapt high after them with open
mouth, and pretended to seize them, then bounded and careered round his
young master with gay short barks, till both were out of breath; and the
boy, flinging the rabbits on the turf, threw himself down on it, with one
arm upon the neck of the panting dog, whose great gasps, like a sobbing
of laughter, heaved his whole frame.
“Ay, good Leonillo, take your rest!” said the boy: “we have done yeoman’s
service to-day, and shown ourselves fit to earn our own livelihood! We
are outlaws now, my lion of the Pyrenees; and you at least lead a merrier
life than in the castle halls, when we hunted for sport, and not for
sustenance! Well-a-day, my Leon!”—as the creature closed his mouth, and
looked wistfully up at him with almost human sympathy and
intelligence—“would that we knew where are all that were once wont to go
with us to the chase! But for them, I would be well content to be a bold
forester all my days! Better so, than to be ever vexed and crossed in
every design for the country’s weal—distrusted above—betrayed beneath!
Alack! alack! my noble father, why wert thou wrecked in every hope—in
every aim!”
These murmurings were broken off as Leonillo suddenly crested his head,
and changed his expression of repose for one of intense listening.
“Already!” exclaimed the boy, springing to his feet, as Leonillo bounded
forward to meet a stout hardy forester, who was advancing from the
opposite end of the glade. This was a man of the largest and most sinewy
mould, his face tanned by sun and wind to a uniform hard ruddy brown, and
his shaggy black hair untrimmed, as well as his dark bristly beard. His
jerkin was of rough leather, crossed by a belt, sustaining sword and
dagger; a bow and arrows were at his back; a huge quarter-staff in his
hand; and his whole aspect was that of a ferocious outlaw, whose hand was
against every man.
But the youth started towards him gleefully, as if the very sight of him
had dispelled all melancholy musings, and shouted merrily,
“Welcome—welcome, Adam! Why so early home? Have the Alton boors turned
surly? or are the King’s prickers abroad, and the neighbourhood
unwholesome for bold clerks of St. Nicholas?”
“Worse!” was the gruff mutter in reply. “Down, Leon: I am in no mood for
thy freaks!”
“What is it, Adam? Have the keepers carried their complaints to the
King, of the venison we have consumed, with small thanks to him?”
“Prince Edward is at Alton! What think you of that, Sir? Come to seek
through copse and brake for the arrant deer-stealer and outlaw, and all
his gang!”
“Why, there’s preferment for you!” said the boy, laughing. “High game
for the heir of the throne! And his gang! Hold up your head, Leonillo:
you and I come in for a share of the honour!”
“Hold up your head!” said the outlaw bitterly. “You may chance to hold
it as high as your father’s is, for all your gibes and jests, my young
Lord, if the Longshanks gets a hold of you, which our Lady forefend.”
“Nay, I think better of my Cousin Longshanks. I loved him well when I
was his page at Hereford: he was tenderer to me than ever my brothers
were; and I scarce think he would hang, draw, and quarter me now.”
“You may try, if you are not the better guided.”
“How did you hear these tidings?” inquired the boy, changing his mood to
a graver one.
“From the monk to whom you confessed a fortnight back. Did you let him
know your lineage?”
“How could I do otherwise?”
“He looked like a man who would keep a secret; and yet—”
“Shame—shame to doubt the good father!”
“Nay, I do not say that I do; but I would have the secret in as few men’s
power as may be. Nevertheless, I thank the good brother. He called out
to me as he saw me about to enter the town, that if I had any tenderness
for my own life, I had best not show myself there; and he went on to tell
me how the Prince was come to his hunting-lodge, with hawk and hound
indeed, but for the following of men rather than bird or beast.”
“And what would you have me do?”
“Be instantly on the way to the coast, ere the search begins; and there,
either for love of Sir Simon the righteous or for that gilt knife of
yours, we may get ferried over to the Isle of Wight, whence—But what ails
the dog! Whist, Leonillo! Hold your throat: I can hear naught but your
clamour!”
The hound was in fact barking with a tremendous lion-like note; and when,
on reiterated commands from his master and the outlaw, he changed it for
a low continuous growling like distant thunder, a step and a rustling of
the boughs became audible.
“They are upon us already!” cried the boy, snatching up and stringing his
bow.
“Leave me to deal with him!” returned the outlaw. “Off to Alton: the
good father will receive you to sanctuary!”
“Flee!—never!” cried the boy. “You teaching my father’s son to flee!”
“Tush!—’tis but one!” said the outlaw. “He is easily dealt with; and he
shall have no time to call his fellows.”
So saying, the forester strode forward into the wood, where a tall figure
was seen through the trees; and with uplifted quarter-staff, dealt a blow
of sudden and deadly force as soon as the stranger came within its sweep,
totally without warning. The power of the stroke might have felled an
ox, and would have at once overthrown the new-comer, but that he was a
man of unusual stature; and this being unperceived in the outlaw’s haste,
the blow lighted on his left shoulder instead of on his head.
“Ha, caitiff!” he exclaimed; and shortening the hunting-pole in his hand,
he returned the stroke with interest, but the outlaw had already prepared
himself to receive the blow on his staff. For some seconds there was a
rapid exchange; and all that the boy could detect in the fierce flourish
of weapons was, that his champion was at least equally matched. The
height of the stranger was superior; and his movements, if less quick and
violent, had an equableness that showed him a thorough master of his
weapon. But ere the lad had time to cross the heather to the scene of
action, the fight was over; the outlaw lay stunned and motionless on the
ground, and the gigantic stranger was leaning on his hunting-pole,
regarding him with a grave unmoved countenance, the fair skin of which
was scarcely flushed by the exertion.
“Spare him! spare him!” cried the boy, leaping forwards. “I am the prey
you seek!”
“Well met, my young Lord,” was the stern reply. “You have found yourself
a worthy way of life, and an honourable companion.”
“Honourable indeed, if faithfulness be honour!” replied the boy. “Myself
I yield, Sir; but spare him, if yet he lives!—O Adam, my only friend!” he
sobbed, as kneeling over him, he raised his head, undid his collar, and
parted the black locks, to seek for the mark of the blow, whence blood
was fast oozing.
“He lives—he will do well enough,” said the hunter. “Now, tell me,
boy—what brought you here?”
“The loving fidelity of this man!” was the prompt reply:—“a Poitevin, a
falconer at Kenilworth, who found me sore wounded on the field at
Evesham, and ever since has tended me as never vassal tended lord; and
now—now hath he indeed died for me!” and the boy, endeavouring to raise
the inanimate form, dropped heavy tears on the senseless face.
“True,” rigidly spoke the hunter, though there was somewhat of a
quivering of the muscles of the cheek discernible amid the curls of his
chestnut beard: “robbery is not the wonted service demanded of
retainers.”
“Poor Adam!” said the youth with a flash of spirit, “at least he never
stripped the peaceful homestead and humble farmer, like the royal
purveyors!”
“Ha—young rebel!” exclaimed the hunter. “Know you what you say?”
“I reck not,” replied the boy: “you have slain my father and my brothers,
and now you have slain my last and only friend. Do as you will with
me—only for my mother’s sake, let it not be a shameful death; and let my
sister Eleanor have my poor Leonillo. And let me, too, leave this gold
with the priest of Alton, that my true-hearted loving Adam may have fit
burial and masses.”
“I tell thee, boy, he is in no more need of a burial than thou or I. I
touched him warily. Here—his face more to the air.”
And the stranger bent down, and with his powerful strength lifted the
heavy form of Adam, so that the boy could better support him. Then
taking some wine from the hunting-flask slung to his own shoulder, he
applied some drops to the bruise. The smart produced signs of life, and
the hunter put his flask into the boy’s hand, saying, “Give him a
draught, and then—” he put his finger to his own lips, and stood somewhat
apart.
Adam opened his eyes, and made some inarticulate murmurs; then, the
liquor being held to his lips, he drank, and with fresh vigour raised
himself.
“The boy!—where is he? What has chanced? Is it you, Sir? Where is the
rogue? Fled, the villain? We shall have the Prince upon us next! I
must after him, and cut his story short! Your hand, Sir!”
“Nay, Adam—your hurt!”
“A broken head! Tush, ’tis naught! Here, your hand! Canst not lend a
hand to help a man up in your own service?” he added testily, as stiff
and dizzy he sat up and tried to rise. “You might have sent an arrow to
stop his traitorous tongue; but there is no help in you!” he added,
provoked at seeing a certain embarrassment about the youth. “Desert me
at this pinch! It is not like his father’s son!” and he was sinking
back, when at sight of the hunter he stumbled eagerly to his feet, but
only to stagger against a tree.
“You are my prisoner!” said the calm deep voice.
“Well and good,” said Adam surlily. “But let the lad go free: he is a
yeoman’s son, who came but to bear me company.”
“And learn thy trade? Goodly lessons in falling unawares on the King’s
huntsmen, and sending arrows after them! Fair breeding, in sooth!”
repeated the stranger, standing with his arms crossed upon his mighty
breadth of chest, and looking at Adam with a still, grave, commanding
blue eye, that seemed to pierce him and hold him down, as it were, and a
countenance whose youthfulness and perfect regularity of feature did but
enhance its exceeding severity of expression. “You know the meed of
robbery and murder?”
“A halter and a bough,” said Adam readily. “Well and good; but I tell
thee that concerns not the boy—since,” he added bitterly, “he is too meek
and tender so much as to lift a hand in his own cause! He has never
crossed the laws.”
“I understand you, friend,” said the hunter: “he is a valued charge—maybe
the son of one of the traitor barons. Take my advice—yield him to the
King’s justice, and secure your own pardon.”
“Out, miscreant!” shouted Adam; and was about to spring at him again, but
the powerful arm collared him, and he recognized at once that he was like
a child in that grasp. He ground his teeth with rage and muttered, “That
a fellow with such thews should give such dastardly counsel, and _he_
yonder not lift a finger to aid!”
“Wilt follow me,” composedly demanded the stranger, “with hands free? or
must I bind them?”
“Follow?” replied Adam, ruefully looking at the boy with eyes full of
reproach—“ay, follow to any gallows thou wilt—and the nearest tree were
the best! Come on!”
“I have no warrant,” returned the grave hunter.
“Tush! what warrant is needed for hanging a well-known outlaw—made so by
the Prince’s tender mercies? The Prince will thank thee, man, for
ridding the realm of the robber who fell on the treasurer bearing the
bags from Leicester!”
And meanwhile, with uncouth cunning, Adam was striving to telegraph by
winks and gestures to the boy who had so grievously disappointed him,
that the moment of his own summary execution would be an excellent one
for his companion’s escape.
But the eye, so steady yet so quick under its somewhat drooping eyelid,
detected the simple stratagem.
“I trow the Prince might thank me more for bringing in this charge of
thine.”
“Small thanks, I trow, for laying hands on a poor orphan—the son of a
Poitevin man-at-arms—that I kept with me for love of his father, though
he is fitter for a convent than the green wood!” added Adam, with the
same sound of keen reproach and disappointment in his voice.
“That shall we learn at Guildford,” replied the stranger. “There are
means of teaching a man to speak.”
“None that will serve with me,” stoutly responded Adam.
“That shall we see,” was the brief answer.
And he signed to his prisoners to move on before him, taking care so to
interpose his stately person between them, that there should be no
communication by word, far less by look.
CHAPTER II
THE LADY OF THE FOREST
“Behold how mercy softeneth still
The haughtiest heart that beats:
Pride with disdain may he answered again,
But pardon at once defeats!”—S. M.
THE so-called forest was in many parts mere open heath, thickly adorned
by the beautiful purple ling, blending into a rich carpet with the dwarf
furze, and backed by thickets of trees in the hollows of the ground.
Across this wild country the tall forester conducted his captives in
silence—moving along with a pace that evidently cost him so little
exertion, and was so steady and even, that his companions might have
supposed it slow, had they only watched it, and not been obliged to keep
up with it. Light of foot as the youth was, he was at times reduced to
an almost breathless run; and Adam plodded along, with strides that
worked his arms and shoulders in sympathy.
After about three miles, when the boy was beginning to feel as if he must
soon be in danger of lagging, they came into a dip of the ground where
stood a long, low, irregular building, partly wood and partly stone,
roofed with shingle in some parts, in others with heather. The last
addition, a deep porch, still retained the fresh tints of the bark on the
timber sides, and the purple of the ling that roofed it.
Sheds and out-houses surrounded it; dogs in couples, horses, grooms, and
foresters, were congregated in the background; but around this new porch
were gathered a troop of peasant women, children, and aged men. The fine
bald brow and profile of the old peasant, the eager face of the
curly-haired child, the worn countenance of the hard-tasked mother, were
all uplifted towards the doorway, in which stood, slightly above them, a
lady, with two long plaited flaxen tresses descending on her shoulders,
under a black silken veil, that disclosed a youthful countenance, full of
pure calm loveliness, of a simple but dignified and devotional
expression, that might have befitted an angel of charity. A priest and a
lady were dispensing loaves and warm garments to the throng around; but
each gift was accompanied by a gentle word from the lady, framed with
difficulty to their homely English tongue, but listened to even by
uncomprehending ears like a strain of Church music.
Adam had expected the forester to turn aside to the group of servants,
but in blank amazement saw him lead the way through the poor at the gate;
and advancing to the porch with a courteous bending of his head, he said
in the soft Provençal—far more familiar than English to Adam’s ears—“Hast
room for another suppliant, mi Dona?”
The sweet fair face lighted up with a sudden sunbeam of joy; and a
musical voice replied. “Welcome, my dearest Lord: much did I need thee
to hear the plaints of some of these thy lieges, which my ears can scarce
understand! But why art thou alone? or rather, why thus strangely
accompanied?”
“These are the captives won by my single arm, whom, according to all laws
of chivalry, thine own true knight thus lays at thy feet, fair lady mine,
to be disposed of at thine own gracious will and pleasure.”
And a smile of such sweetness lightened his features, that a murmur of
“Blessings on his comely face!” ran through the assembly; and Adam
indulged in a gruff startled murmur of “’Tis the Prince, or the devil
himself!” while his young master, comprehending the gesture of the
Prince, and overborne by the lovely winning graces of the Princess,
stepped forward, doffing his cap and bending his knee, and signing to
Adam to follow his example.
“Thou hast been daring peril again!” said the Princess, holding her
husband’s arm, and looking up into his face with lovingly reproachful yet
exulting eyes. “Yet I will not be troubled! Naught is danger to thee!
And yet alone and unarmed to encounter such a sturdy savage as I see
yonder! But there is blood on his brow! Let his hurt be looked to ere
we speak of his fate.”
“He is at thy disposal, mi Dona,” returned Edward: “thou art the judge of
both, and shall decide their lot when thou hast heard their tale.”
“It can scarce be a very dark one,” replied Eleanor, “or thou wouldst
never have led them to such a judge!” Then turning to the prisoners, she
began to say in her foreign English, “Follow the good father, friends—”
when she broke off at fuller sight of the boy’s countenance, and
exclaimed in Provençal, “I know the like of that face and mien!”
“Truly dost thou know it,” her husband replied; “but peace till thou hast
cleared thy present court, and we can be private.—Follow the priest,” he
added, “and await the Princess’s pleasure.”
They obeyed; and the priest led them through a side-door, through which
they could still hear Eleanor’s sweet Castillian voice laying before her
husband her difficulties in comprehending her various petitioners. The
priest being English, was hardly more easily understood than his flock;
and her lady spoke little but _langue d’oui_, the Northern French, which
was as little serviceable in dealing with her Spanish and Provençal as
with the rude West-Saxon-English. Edward’s deep manly tones were to be
heard, however, now interrogating the peasants in their own tongue, now
briefly interpreting to his wife in Provençal; and a listener could
easily gather that his hand was as bounteous, his heart as merciful, as
hers, save where attacks on the royal game had been requited by the
trouble complained of; and that in such cases she pleaded in vain.
The captives, whom her husband had surrendered to her mercy, had been led
into a great, long, low hall, with rudely-timbered sides, and rough beams
to the roof, with a stone floor, and great open fire, over which a
man-cook was chattering French to his bewildered English scullion. An
oak table, and settles on either side of it, ran the whole length of the
hall; and here the priest bade the two prisoners seat themselves. They
obeyed—the boy slouching his cap over his face, averting it, and keeping
as far as possible from the group of servants near the fire. The priest
called for bread, meat, and beer, to be set before them; and after a
moment’s examination of Adam’s bruise, applied the simple remedy that was
all it required, and left them to their meal. Adam took this opportunity
to growl in an undertone, “Does _he_ there know you?” The reply was a
nod of assent. “And you knew him?” Another nod; and then the boy,
looking heedfully round, added in a quick, undertone, “Not till you were
down. Then he helped me to restore you. You forgive me, Adam, now?” and
he held out his hand, and wrung the rugged one of the forester.
“What should I forgive! Poor lad! you could not have striven in the
Longshanks’ grasp! I was a fool not to guess how it was, when I saw you
not knowing which way to look!”
“Hush!” broke in the youth with uplifted hand, as a page of about his own
age came daintily into the hall, gathering his green robe about him as if
he disdained the neighbourhood, and holding his head high under his
jaunty tall feathered cap.
“Outlaws!” he said, speaking English, but with a strong foreign accent,
and as if it were a great condescension, “the gracious Princess summons
you to her presence. Follow me!”
The colour rushed to the boy’s temples, and a retort was on his lips, but
he struggled to withhold it; and likewise speaking English, said, “I
would we could have some water, and make ourselves meeter for her
presence.”
“Scarce worth the pains,” returned the page. “As if thou couldst ever be
meet for her presence! She had rather be rid of thee promptly, than wait
to be regaled with thy May-day braveries—honest lad!”
Again the answer was only restrained with exceeding difficulty; and there
was a scornful smile on the young prisoner’s cheek, that caused the page
to exclaim angrily, “What means that insolence, malapert boy?”
But there was no time for further strife; for the door was pushed open,
and the Prince’s voice called, “Hamlyn de Valence, why tarry the
prisoners?”
“Only, Sir,” returned Hamlyn, “that this young robber is offended that he
hath not time to deck himself out in his last stolen gold chain, to
gratify the Princess!”
“Peace, Hamlyn,” returned the Prince: “thou speakest thou knowest not
what.—Come hither, boy,” he added, laying his hand on his young captive’s
shoulder, and putting him through the door with a familiarity that
astonished Hamlyn—all the more, when he found that while both prisoners
were admitted, he himself was excluded!
Princess Eleanor was alone in another chamber of the sylvan lodge, hung
with tapestry representing hunting scenes, the floor laid with
deer-skins, and deer’s antlers projecting from the wall, to support the
feminine properties that marked it as her special abode. She was
standing when they entered; and was turning eagerly with outstretched
hand and face of recognition, when Prince Edward checked her by saying,
“Nay, the cause is not yet tried:” and placing her in a large carved
oaken chair, where she sat with a lily-like grace and dignity, half
wondering, but following his lead, he proceeded, “Sit thou there, fair
dame, and exercise thy right, as judge of the two captives whom I place
at thy feet.”
“And you, my Lord?” she asked.
“I stand as their accuser,” said Edward. “Advance, prisoners!—Now, most
fair judge, what dost thou decree for the doom of Adam de Gourdon, rebel
first, and since that the terror of our royal father’s lieges, the robber
of his treasurers, the rifler of our Cousin Pembroke’s jewellery, the
slayer of our deer?”
“Alas! my Lord, why put such questions to me,” said Eleanor imploringly,
“unless, as I would fain hope, thou dost but jest?”
“Do I speak jest, Gourdon?” said Edward, regarding Adam with a lion-like
glance.
“’Tis all true,” growled Adam.
“And,” proceeded the Prince, “if thy gentle lips refuse to utter the doom
merited by such deeds, what wilt thou say to hear that, not content with
these traitorous deeds of his own, he fosters the treason of others?
Here stands a young rebel, who would have perished at Evesham, but for
the care and protection of this Gourdon—who healed his wounds, guarded
him, robbed for him, for him spurned the offer of amnesty, and finally,
set on thine own husband in Alton Wood—all to shelter yonder young
traitor from the hands of justice! Speak the sentence he merits, most
just of judges!”
“The sentence he merits?” said Eleanor, with swimming eyes. “Oh! would
that I were indeed monarch, to dispense life or death! What he merits he
shall have, from my whole heart—mine own poor esteem for his fidelity,
and our joint entreaties to the King for his pardon! Brave man—thou
shalt come with me to seek thy pardon from King Henry!”
“Thanks, Lady,” said Adam with rude courtesy; “but it were better to seek
my young lord’s.”
“My own dear young cousin!” exclaimed Eleanor, laying aside her assumed
judicial power, and again holding out her hands to him, “we deemed you
slain!”
“Yes, come hither,” said Edward, “my jailer at Hereford—the rebel who
drew his maiden sword against his King and uncle—the outlaw who would try
whether Leicester fits as well as Huntingdon with a bandit life! What
hast thou to say for thyself, Richard de Montfort?”
“That my fate, be it what it may, must not stand in the way of Adam’s
pardon!” said Richard, standing still, without response to the Princess’s
invitation. “My Lord, you have spoken much of his noble devotion to me
for my father’s sake; but you know not the half of what he has done and
dared for me. Oh! plead for him, Lady!”
“Plead for him!” said Eleanor: “that will I do with all my heart; and
well do I know that the good old King will weep with gratitude to him for
having preserved the life of his young nephew. Yes, Richard, oft have we
grieved for thee, my husband’s kind young companion in his captivity, and
mourned that no tidings could be gained of thee!”
It was not Richard who replied to this winning address. He stood
flushed, irresolute, with eyes resolutely cast down, as if to avoid
seeing the Princess’s sweet face.
Adam, however, spoke: “Then, Lady, I am indeed beholden to you; provided
that the boy is safe.”
“He is safe,” said Prince Edward. “His age is protection sufficient.—My
young cousin, thou art no outlaw: thine uncle will welcome thee gladly;
and a career is open to thee where thou mayst redeem the honour of thy
name.”
The colour came with deeper crimson to the boy’s cheek, as he answered in
a choked voice, “My father’s name needs no redemption!”
Simultaneously a pleading interjection from the Princess, and a warning
growl from De Gourdon, admonished Richard that he was on perilous ground;
but the Prince responded in a tone of deep feeling, “Well said, Richard:
the term does not befit that worthy name. I should have said that I
would fain help thee to maintain its honour. My page once, wilt thou be
so again? and one day my knight—my trusty baron?”
“How can I?” said Richard, still in the same undertone, subdued but
determined: “it was you who slew him and my brothers!”
“Nay, nay!” exclaimed the Princess: “the poor boy thinks all his kindred
are slain!”
“And they are not!” cried Richard, raising his face with sudden
animation. “They are safe?”
“Thy brother Henry died with—with the Earl,” said Eleanor; “but all the
rest are safe, and in France.”
“And my mother and sister?” asked Richard.
“They are likewise abroad,” said the Prince. “And, Richard, thou art
free to join them if thou wilt. But listen first to me. We tarry yet
two days at this forest lodge: remain with us for that space—thy name and
rank unknown if thou wilt—and if thou shalt still look on me as guilty of
thy father’s death, and not as a loving kinsman, who honoured him deeply,
I will send thee safely to the coast, with letters to my uncle, the King
of France.”
Richard raised his head with a searching glance, to see whether this were
invitation or command.
“Thou art my captive,” said Eleanor softly, coming towards him with a
young matron’s caressing manner to a boy whom she would win and
encourage.
“Not captive, but guest,” said Edward; but Richard perceived in the tones
that no choice was left him, as far as these two days were concerned.
CHAPTER III
ALTON LODGE
“Ever were his sons hawtayn,
And bold for their vilanye;
Bothe to knight and sweyn
Did they vilanye.”
_Old Ballad of Simon de Montforte_.
FOR the first time for many a month, Richard de Montfort lay down to
sleep in a pallet bed, instead of a couch of heather; but his heart was
ill at ease. He was the fourth son of the great Earl of Leicester, Simon
de Montfort; and for the earlier years of his life, he had been under the
careful training of the excellent chaplain, Adam de Marisco, a pupil and
disciple of the great Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln. His elder
brothers had early left this wholesome control; pushed forward by the sad
circumstances that finally drove their father to take up arms against the
King, and strangers to the noble temper that actuated him in his
championship of the English people, they became mere lawless
rebels—fiercely profiting by his elevation, not for the good of the
people, but for their own gratification.
Richard had been still a mere boy under constant control, and being
intelligent, spirited, and docile, had been an especial favourite with
his father. To him the great Earl had been the model of all that was
admirable, wise, and noble; deeply religious, just, and charitable, and
perfect in all the arts of chivalry and accomplishments of peace—a tender
and indulgent father, and a firm and wise head of a household—he had been
ardently loved and looked up to by the young son, who had perhaps more in
common with him by nature than any other of the family.
Wrongs and injuries had been heaped upon Montfort by the weak and fickle
King, who would far better have understood him, if, like the selfish
kinsmen who encircled the throne, he had struggled for his own advantage,
and not for the maintenance of the Great Charter. Richard was too young
to remember the early days when his elder brothers had been companions,
almost on equal terms, to their first cousins, the King’s sons; his whole
impression of his parents’ relations with the court was of injustice and
perfidy from the King and his counsellors, vehemently blamed by his
mother and brothers, but sometimes palliated by his father, who almost
always, even at the worst, pleaded the King’s helplessness, and Prince
Edward’s honourable intentions. Understanding little of the rights of
the case, Richard only saw his father as the maintainer of the laws, and
defender of the oppressed against covenant breakers; and when the appeal
to arms was at length made, he saw the white cross assumed by his father
and brothers, in full belief that the war in defence of Magna Carta was
indeed as sacred as a crusade, and he had earnestly entreated to be
allowed to bear arms; but he had been deemed as yet too young, and thus
had had no share in the victory of Lewes, save the full triumph in it
that was felt by all at Kenilworth. Afterwards, when sent to be Prince
Edward’s page at Hereford, he was prepared to regard his royal cousin as
a ferocious enemy, and was much taken by surprise to find him a graceful
courtly knight, peculiarly gentle in manner, loving music, romances, and
all chivalrous accomplishments; and far from the pride and haughtiness
that had been the theme of all the vassals who assembled at Kenilworth,
he was gracious to all, and distinguished his young page by treating him
as a kinsman and favourite companion; showing him indeed far more
consideration than ever he had received from his unruly turbulent
brothers.
When Edward had effected his escape, and had joined the Mortimers and
Clares, Richard had gone home, where his expressions of affection for the
Prince were listened to by his father, indeed, with a well-pleased though
melancholy smile, and an augury that one day his brave godson would shake
off the old King’s evil counsellors, and show himself in his true and
noble colouring. His brothers, however, laughed and chid any word about
the Prince’s kindness. Edward’s flattery and seduction, they declared,
had won the young De Clare from their cause. And in vain did their
father assure them that they had lost the alliance of the house of
Gloucester solely by their own over-bearing injustice—a tyranny worse
than had been exercised under the name of the King.
With Henry of Winchester in their hands, however, theirs seemed the loyal
cause; and Richard had, by the influence of his elders, been made ashamed
of his regard for the Prince, and looked upon it as a treacherous
rebellion, when Edward mustered his forces, and fell upon Leicester and
his followers. His father had mournfully yielded to the boy’s entreaty
to remain with him, instead of being sent away with his mother and the
younger ones for security: an honourable death, said the Earl, might be
better for him than an outlawed and proscribed life. And thus Richard
had heard his father’s exclamation on marking the well-ordered advance of
the Royalists: “They have learnt this style from me. Now, God have mercy
on our souls, for our bodies are the Prince’s!”
And when Henry, his eldest son, spoke words of confidence, entreating him
not to despair, he had answered, “I do not, my son; but your presumption,
and the pride of thy brothers, have brought me to this pass. I firmly
believe I shall die for the cause of God and justice.”
Richard had shared his father’s last Communion, received his last
blessing, and had stood beside him in the desperate ring, which in true
English fashion died on the field of battle, but never was driven from
it. Since that time, the boy’s life had been a wandering amid outlaws
and peasants—all in one mind of bitter hatred to the court for its cruel
vexations and oppressions, and of intense love and regret for their
champion, Sir Simon the Righteous, of whose beneficence tales were
everywhere told, rising at every step into greater wonder, until at
length they were enhanced into miracles, wrought by his severed head and
hands. Each day had made the boy prouder of his father’s memory, more
deeply incensed against the Court party that had brought about his fall;
and keen and bitter were his feelings at finding himself in the hands of
the Prince himself. He chafed all the more at feeling the ascendency
which Edward’s lofty demeanour and personal kindness had formerly exerted
over him, reviving again by force of habit; he hated himself for not
having at once challenged his father’s murderer; so as, if he could not
do more, to have died by his hand; and he despised himself the more, for
knowing that all he could have said would have been good-naturedly put
down by the Prince; all he could have done would have been but like a
gnat’s efforts against that mighty strength. Then how despicable it was
to be sensible, in spite of himself, that this atmosphere of courtly
refinement was far more natural to him—the son of a Provençal noble, and
of a princess mother—than the rude forest life he had lately led. The
greenwood liberty had its charms; and he had truly loved Adam de Gourdon;
but the soft tones and refined accents were like a note of home to him;
and though he had never seen the Princess before—she having been sent to
the Court of St. Louis during the troubles—yet the whole of the interview
gave him an inexplicable sense of being again among kindred and friends.
He told himself that it was base, resolved that he would show himself
determined to cast in his lot with his exiled brethren, and made up his
mind to maintain a dignified silence during these two days, and at the
end of them to leave with the Prince a challenge, to be fought out when
he should have attained manly strength and skill in arms.
In pursuance of this resolution, he appeared at the morning mass and meal
still grave and silent, and especially avoiding young Hamlyn de Valence,
who, as the son of one of the half brothers of Henry III., stood in the
same relationship to Prince Edward and to Richard, whose mother was the
sister of King Henry. Probably Hamlyn had had a hint from the Prince,
for though he regarded young Montfort with no friendly eyes, he yielded
him an equality of precedence, which hardly consorted with Richard’s rude
forest garments.
The chase was the order of the day. The Prince rode forth with a boar
spear to hunt one of these monsters of the wood, of which vague reports
had reached him, unconfirmed, till Adam de Gourdon had undertaken to show
him the creature’s lair. He had proposed to Richard to join the hunt;
but the boy, firm to his resolution of accepting no favour from him, that
could be helped, had refused as curtly as he could; and then, not without
a feeling of disappointment, had stood holding Leonillo in, as the
gallant train of hunters rode down the woodland glade, and he figured to
himself the brave sport in which they would soon be engaged.
The most part of the day was spent by him in lying under a tree, with his
dog by his side, thinking over the scenes of his earlier life, which had
passed by his childish mind like those of a drama, in which he had no
part nor comprehension, but which now, with clearer perceptions, he
strove to recall and explain to himself. Ever his father’s stately
figure was the centre of his recollections, whether receiving tidings of
infractions of engagements, taking prompt measures for action, or
striving to repress the violence of his sons and partizans, or it might
be gazing on his younger boys with sad anxiety. Richard well remembered
his saying, when he heard that his sons, Simon and Guy, had been
plundering the merchant ships in the Channel: “Alas! alas! when I was
more loyal to the law than to the Crown, I little deemed that I was
rearing a brood who would scorn all law and loyalty!”
And well too did Richard recollect that when the proposal had been made
that he should become the attendant of the Prince at Hereford, his father
had told him that here he would see the mirror of all that was knightly
and virtuous; and had added, on the loud outcry of the more prejudiced
brothers: “It is only the truth. Were it not that the King’s folly and
his perjured counsellors had come between my nephew Edward and his better
self, we should have in him a sovereign who might fitly be reckoned as a
tenth worthy. It is his very duty to a misruled father that has ranged
him against us.”
“Yet,” thought Richard, “on the man who thus thought and spoke of him the
Prince could make savage warfare; nay, offer his senseless corpse foul
despite. How can I tarry these two days in such keeping? I had
rather—if he will still keep me—be a captive in his lowest dungeon, than
eat of his bread as a guest! By our Lady, I will tell him so to his
face! I will none of his favours! Alone I will go to the coast—alone
make my way to Simon and Guy, with no letters to the French king! All
kings, however saintly they may be called, are in league, and make common
cause; as said my poor brother Henry, when the Mise of Lewes was to be
laid before this Frenchman! I will none of them! Pshaw! is this the
Princess coming? I trust she will not see me. I want none of her fair
words.”
He had prepared himself to be ungracious; but his courtly breeding was
too much of an instinct with him for him not to rise, doff his cap, and
stand aside, as Eleanor of Castille slowly moved towards the woodland
path, with her graceful Spanish step, followed, but at some distance, by
two of her women. She turned as she was passing him, and smiled with a
sweet radiance that would have won him instantly, had he not heard his
elder brothers sneer at the cheap coin of royal smiles. He only bowed;
but Leonillo was more accessible, and started forward to pay his homage
of dignified blandishments to the queenly sweetness that pleased his
canine appreciation. Richard was forced to step forth, call him in, and
make his excuses; but the Princess responded by praises of the noble
animal, and caresses, to which Leonillo replied with a grand gratitude,
that showed him as nobly bred as his young master.
“Thou art a gallant creature,” said Eleanor, her hand upon the proud
head; “and no doubt as faithful as beautiful!”
“Faithful to the death, Lady,” replied Richard warmly.
“He is thine own, I trow,” said the Princess,—“not thy groom’s? I
remember, that when thy brave father brought my lord and me back from our
bridal at Burgos, he procured two hounds in the Pyrenees, of meseems,
such a breed.”
“True, Lady; they were the parents of my Leonillo,” said Richard,
gratified, in spite of himself.
“How well I remember,” continued Eleanor, “that first sight of the great
Earl. My brothers had teased me for going so far north, and told me the
English were mere rude islanders—boorish, and unlettered; but, child as I
was, scarce eleven years old, I could perceive the nobleness of the Earl.
‘If all thy new subjects be like him,’ said my brother to me, ‘thou wilt
reign over a race of kings.’ And how good he was to me when I wept at
leaving my home and friends! How he framed his tongue to speak my own
Castillian to me; how he comforted me, when the Queen, my mother-in-law,
required more dignity of me than I yet knew how to assume; and how he
chid my boy bridegroom for showing scant regard for his girl bride!” said
Eleanor, smiling at the recollection, as the beloved wife of eleven years
could well afford to do. “I mind me well that he found me weeping,
because my Edward had tied the scarf I gave him on the neck of one of
those very dogs, and the fatherly counsel he gave me. Ah, Leonillo, thy
wise wistful face brings back many thoughts to my mind! I am glad I may
honour thee for fidelity!”
“Indeed you may, Lady,” said Richard. “It was he that above all saved my
life.”
“Prithee let me hear,” said the Princess, who had already so moved on,
while herself speaking, as to draw Richard into walking with her along
the path that had been cleared under the beech trees. “We have so much
longed to know thy fate.”
“I cannot tell you much, Lady,” returned Richard. “The last thing I
recollect on that dreadful day was, that my father asked for quarter—for
us—for my brother Henry and me. We heard the reply: ‘No quarter for
traitors!’ and Henry fell before us a dead man. My father shouted, ‘By
the arm of St. James, it is time for me to die!’ I saw him, with his
sword in both hands, cut down a wild Welshman who was rushing on me.
Then I saw no more, till in the moonlight I was awakened by this dog’s
cool tongue licking the blood from my face, and heard his low whining
over me.”
“Good dog, good dog!” murmured Eleanor, caressing the animal. “And thou,
Richard, thou wert sorely wounded?”
“Sorely,” said Richard; “my side had been pierced with a lance, a Welsh
two-handed sword had broken through my helmet, and well-nigh cleft my
skull; and the men-at-arms, riding over me I suppose, must have broken my
leg, for I could not move: and oh! I felt it hard that I had yet to die.
Then, Lady, came lights and murmuring voices. They were Mortimer’s
plundering Welsh robbers. I heard their wild gibbering tongue; and I
knew how it would be with me, should they see the white cross on my
breast. But, Lady, Leonillo stood over me. His lion bark chased them
aside; and when one bolder than the rest came near the mound where we
lay, good Leonillo flew at his savage throat. I heard the struggle as I
lay—the growls of the dog, the howls of the man; and then they were cut
short. And next I heard de Gourdon’s gruff voice commending the good
hound, whose note had led him to the spot, from the woods, where he was
hiding after the battle. The faithful beast sprang from him, and in a
moment more had led him to me. Then—ah, then, Lady! when Adam had freed
me from my broken helm, and lifted me in his arms, what a sight had I!
Oh, what a field that harvest moon shone upon! how thickly heaped was
that little mound! And there was my father’s face up-turned in the white
moonlight! O Lady, never in hall or bower could it have been so
peaceful, or so majestic! I bade Adam lay me down by his side, and keep
guard through the night with Leonillo; but he said that the plunderers
would come in numbers too great for him, and that he must care for the
living rather than the dead; and withstand him as I would, he bore me
away. O Lady, Lady, foul wrong was done when we were gone!”
“Think not on that,” said Eleanor; “it bitterly grieved my lord that so
it should have been. Thou knowest, I hope, that he was the chief mourner
when those honoured limbs were laid in the holy ground at Evesham Abbey.
They told me, who saw him that day, that his weeping for his godfather
and his Cousin Henry overcame all joy in his victory. And I can assure
thee, dear Richard, that when, three months after, I came to him at
Canterbury, just after he had been with thy mother at Dover, even then he
was sad and mournful. He said that the wisest and best baron in England
had been made a rebel of, and then slain; and he was full of sorrow for
thee, only then understanding from thy mother that thou hadst been in the
battle at all, and that nothing had been heard of thee. He said thou
wert the most like to thy father of all his sons; and truly I knew thee
at once by thine eyes, Richard. Where wast thou all these months?”
“At first,” said Richard, “I was in an anchoret’s cell, in the wall of a
church. So please you, Madame, I must not name names; but when Adam,
bearing me faint and well-nigh dying on his back, saw the twinkling light
in the churchyard, he knocked, and entreated aid. The good anchoret
pitied my need at first, and when he learnt my name, he gave me shelter
for my father’s sake, the friend of all religious men. I lay on his
little bed, in the chamber in the wall, till I could again walk.
Meanwhile, Adam watched in the woods at hand, and from time to time came
at night to see how I fared, and bring me tidings. Simon was still
holding out Kenilworth, and we hoped to join him there; but when we set
forth I was still lame, and too feeble to go far in a day; and we fell in
with—within short, with a band of robbers, who detained us, half as
guests, half as captives. They needed Adam’s stout arm; and there was a
shrewd, gray, tough old fellow, who had been in Robin Hood’s band, and
was looked up to as a sort of prince among them, who was bent on making
us one with them. Lady, you would smile to hear how the old man used to
sit by me as I lay on the rushes, and talk of outlawry, as Father Adam de
Marisco used to talk of learning—as a good and noble science, decaying
for want of spirit and valour in these days. It was all laziness, he
said; barons and princes must needs have their wars, and use up all the
stout men that were fit to bend a bow in a thicket. If the Prince went
on at this rate, he said, there would soon be not an honest outlaw to be
found in England! But he was a kind old man, and very good to me; and he
taught me how to shoot with the long bow better than ever our master at
Odiham could. However, I could not brook the spoiler’s life, and the
band did not trust me; so, as we found that Kenilworth had fallen, as
soon as my strength had returned to me, we stole away from the outlaws,
and came southwards, hoping to find my mother at Odiham. Hearing that
Odiham too was gone from us, we have lurked in Alton Wood till means
should serve us for reaching the coast.”
“Till thou hast found the friend who has longed for thee, and sought for
thee,” replied Eleanor. “What didst thou do, young Richard, to win my
husband’s heart so entirely in his captivity?”
“I know not, Lady, why he should take thought for me,” bluntly said
Richard, with a return of the sensation of being coaxed and talked over.
“Methinks I can tell thee one cause,” returned the Princess. “Was there
not a time when thou didst overhear him concerting with Thomas de Clare
the plan of an escape, and thou didst warn them that thou wast at hand;
ay, and yet didst send notice to thy father?”
“Yes,” answered Richard with surprise; “I could do no other.”
“Even so,” said Eleanor. “And thus didst thou win the esteem of thy
kinsman. ‘The stripling is loyal and trustworthy,’ he has said to me;
‘pity that such a heart should be pierced in an inglorious field. Would
that I could find him, and strive to return to him something of what his
father’s care hath wrought for me.’ Richard, trust me, it would be a
real joy and lightening of his grief to have thee with him.”
“Grief, Madame!” repeated Richard. “I little thought he grieved for my
father, who, but for him, would be—” and a sob checked him, as the
contrast rose before him of the great Earl and beautiful Countess
presiding over their large family and princely household, and the
scattered ruined state of all at present.
“He shall answer that question himself,” said Eleanor. “See, here he
comes to meet us by the beechwood alley.”
And in fact, a form, well suited to its setting within the stately aisles
of the beech trees, was pacing towards them. The chase had ended, and
hearing that his wife had walked forth into the wood, the Prince had come
by another path to meet her, and his rare and beautiful smile shone out
as he saw who was her companion. “Art making friends with my young
cousin?” he said affectionately.
“I would fain do so,” replied Eleanor; “but alas, my Lord! he feels that
there is a long dark reckoning behind, that stands in the way of our
friendship.”
Richard looked down, and did not speak. The Princess had put his thought
into words.
“Richard,” said the Prince, “I feel the same. It is for that very cause
that I seek to have thee with me. Hear me. Thou art grown older, and
hast seen man’s work and man’s sorrows, since I left thee on the
hill-side at Hereford. Thou canst see, perchance, that a question hath
two sides—though it is not given to all men to do so. Hearken then.—Thy
father was the greatest man I have known—nay, but for the thought of my
uncle of France, I should say the holiest. He was my teacher in all
knightly doings, and in all kingly thoughts, such as I pray may be with
me through life. It was from him I learnt that this royal, this noble
power, is not given to exalt ourselves, but as a trust for the welfare of
others. It was the spring of action that was with him through life.”
“It was,” murmured Richard, calling to mind many a saying of his
father’s.
“And fain would he have impressed it on all around,” added Edward: “but
there were others who deemed that kingly power was but a means of
enjoyment, and that restraint was an outrage on the crown. They drew one
way, the Earl drew the other, and, as his noble nature prompted him, made
common cause with the injured. It skills not to go through the past.
Those whom he joined had selfish aims, and pushed him on; and as the
crown had been led to invade the rights of the vassals, so the vassals
invaded my father’s rights. Oaths were extorted, though both sides knew
they could never be observed; and between violences, now on one side, now
on the other, the right course could scarce be kept. The Earl imagined
that, with my father in his hands, removed from all other influences, he
could give England the happy days they talk of her having enjoyed under
my patron St. Edward; but, as thou knowest, Richard, the authority he
held, being unlawful, was unregarded, and its worst transgressors came
out of his own bosom. He could not enforce the terms on which I had
yielded myself—he could not even prevent my father from being a mere
captive; and for the English folk, their miseries were but multiplied by
the tyrants who had arisen.”
“It was no doing of his,” said Richard, with cheek hotly glowing.
“None know that better than I,” said the Prince; “but if he had snatched
the bridle from a feeble hand, it was only to find that the steed could
not be ruled by him. What was left for me but to break my bonds, and
deliver my father, in the hope that, being come to man’s estate, I might
set matters on a surer footing? I had hoped—I had greatly hoped, so to
rule affairs, that the Earl might own that his training had not been lost
on his nephew, and that the Crown might be trusted not to infringe the
Charter. I had hoped that he might yet be my wisest counsellor. But,
Richard, I too had supporters who outran my commands. Bitter hatred and
malice had been awakened, and cruel resolves that none should be spared.
When I returned from bearing my father, bleeding and dismayed, from the
battle, whither he had been cruelly led, it was to find that my orders
had been disobeyed—that there had been foul and cruel slaughter; and that
all my hopes that my uncle of Leicester would forgive me and look
friendly on me were ended!”
The Prince’s lip trembled as he spoke, and tears glistened in his eyes;
and the evident struggle to repress his feelings, brought home deeply and
forcibly the conviction to Richard that his sorrow was genuine.
He could not speak for some seconds; then he added: “I marvel not that I
am looked on among you as guilty of his blood. Simon and Guy regard me
as one with whom they are at deadly feud, and cannot understand that it
was their own excesses that armed those merciless hands against him.
Even my aunt shrank from me, and implored my mercy as though I were a
ruthless tyrant. But thou, Richard, thou hast inherited enough of thy
father’s mind to be able to understand how unwillingly was my share in
his fall, and how great would be my comfort and joy in being good kinsman
to one of his sons.”
The strong man’s generous pleading was most touching. Richard bowed his
head; the Princess watched him eagerly. The boy spoke at last in
perplexity. “My Lord, you know better than I. Would it be knightly,
would it be honourable?”
The Princess started in some indignation at such a question to her
husband; but Edward understood the boy better, and said, “That which is
most Christian is most knightly.” Then pausing: “Ask thine heart,
Richard; which would thy father choose for thee—to live in such guidance
as I hope will ever be found in my household, or to share the wandering,
I fear me freebooting, life of thy brothers?”
Richard could not forget how his father had sternly withheld him from
going with Simon to besiege Pevensey. He knew that these two brethren
had long been a pain and grief to his father; and began to understand
that the nephew, with whom the Earl’s last battle had been fought, was
nevertheless his truest pupil.
“Thou wilt remain,” said Edward decisively; “and let us strive one day to
bring to pass the state of things for which thy father and I fought
alike, though, alas! in opposite ranks.”
“If my mother consents,” said Richard, his head bent down, and uttering
the words with the more difficulty, because he felt so strongly drawn
towards his cousin, who never seemed so mighty as in his condescension.
“Then, Richard de Montfort,” said Edward gravely, “let us render to one
another the kiss of peace, as kinsmen who have put away all thought of
wrong between them.”
Richard looked up; and the Prince bending his lofty head, there was
exchanged between them that solemn embrace, which in the early middle
ages was the deepest token of amity.
And with that kiss, it was as though the soul of Richard de Montfort were
knit to the soul of Edward of England with the heart-whole devotion,
composed of affection and loyal homage to a great character, which ever
since the days of the bond between the son of the doomed King of Israel
and the youthful slayer of the Philistine champion, has been one of the
noblest passions of a young heart.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRANSLATION
“Now in gems their relics lie,
And their names in blazonry,
And their forms in storied panes
Gleam athwart their own loved fanes.”
_Lyra Innocentium_.
IF novelty has its charms, so has old age, and to us the great abbey
church of Westminster has become doubly beloved by long generations of
affection, and doubly beautiful by the softening handiwork of time and of
smoke.
Yet what a glorious sight must it not have been when it was fresh from
the hands of the builder, the creamy stone clear and sharp at every
angle, and each moulding and flower true and perfect as the chisel had
newly left it. The deep archway of the west front opened in stately
magnificence, and yet with a light loftiness hitherto unknown in England,
and somewhat approaching to the style in which the great French
cathedrals were then rising. And its accompaniments were, on the one
hand the palace and hall, on the other hand the monastery, with its high
walled courts and deep-browed cloisters, its noble refectory and vaulted
kitchen, the herbarium or garden, shady with trees, and enriched with
curious plants of Palestine, sloping down to the broad and majestic
Thames, pure and blue as he pursued his silver winding way through
emerald meadows and softly rising hills clothed with copses and woods.
To the east, seated upon her hills, stood the crowned and battlemented
city, the massive White Tower rising above the fortifications.
The autumn brilliance of October, 1269, never enlightened a more gorgeous
scene than when it shone upon the ceremony still noted in our Calendar as
the Translation of King Edward. Buried at first in his own low-browed
heavy-arched Norman structure, which he had built, as he believed, at the
express bidding of St. Peter; the Confessor, whose tender-hearted and
devout nature had, by force of contrast with those of his fierce foreign
successors, come to assume a saintly halo in the eyes not merely of the
English, but of their Angevin lords themselves, was, now to reign on
almost equal terms with the great Apostle himself, as one of the
hallowing patrons of the Abbey—nay, since at least his relics were entire
and undoubted, as its chief attraction.
The new chapel in his especial honour, behind the exquisite bayed apsidal
chancel, was at length complete; and on this day he was to take
possession of it. An ark of pure gold, chased and ornamented with the
surpassing grace of that period of perfect taste, had received the
royally robed corpse, which Churchmen averred lay calm and beautiful,
untainted by decay; and this was now uplifted by the arms of King Henry
himself, of Richard King of the Romans his brother, and of the two
princes, Edward and Edmund.
It was a striking sight to see those two pairs of brothers. The two
kings, nearly of an age, and so fondly attached that they could hardly
brook a separation, till the death of the one broke the wearied heart of
the other, were both gray-haired prematurely-aged men, of features that
time instead of hardening had rendered more feeble and uncertain. Their
faces were much alike, but Henry might be known from Richard by a certain
inequality in the outline of his eyebrows; and their dress, though both
alike wore long flowing gowns, the side seams only coming down as far as
the thigh so as to allow play for the limbs, so far differed that Henry’s
was of blue, with the English lions embroidered in red and gold on his
breast, and Richard was in the imperial purple, or rather scarlet, and
the eagle of the empire on his breast testified to the futile election
which he had purchased with the wealth of his Cornish mines. Both the
elders together, with all their best will and their simple faith in the
availing merit of the action they were performing, would have been
physically incapable of proceeding many steps with their burden, but for
the support it received from the two younger men who sustained the feet
of the saint, using some dexterity in adapting their strength so that the
coffin might be carried evenly.
One was the hunter we have already seen in Alton Wood. His features wore
their characteristic stamp of deep awe and enthusiasm, and even as he
slowly and calmly moved, sustaining the chief of the weight with scarcely
an effort of his giant strength, his head towering high above all those
around, his eyes might be observed to be seeing, though not marking, what
was before them, but to be fixed as though the soul were in
contemplation, far far away. He did not see in the present scene four
princes rendering homage to a royal saint, who, from personal connection
and by a brilliant display of devotion, might be propitiated into
becoming a valuable patron amid intercessor; still less did it present
itself to him as a pageant in which he was to bow his splendid powers,
mental and bodily, to aid two feeble-minded old men to totter under the
gold-cased corpse of a still more foolish and mischievous prince, dead
two hundred years back. No, rather thought and eye were alike upon the
great invisible world, the echo of whose chants might perchance be
ringing on his ear; that world where holy kings cast their crowns before
the Throne, and where the lamb-like spirit of the Confessor might be
joining in the praise, and offering these tokens of honour to Him to whom
all honour and praise and glory and blessing are due.
Of shorter stature, darker browed, of less regular feature and less clear
complexion, so as to look as if he were the elder of the brothers, Prince
Edmund moved by his side, using much exertion, and bending with the
effort, so as to increase the slight sloop that had led to his historical
nickname of the Crouchback, though some think this was merely taken from
his crusading cross. He bore the arms of Sicily, to which he had not yet
resigned his claim. His eye wandered, but not far away, like that of his
brother. It was in search of his young betrothed, the Lady Aveline of
Lancaster, the fair young heiress to whom he was to owe the great earldom
that was a fair portion for a younger brother even of royalty.
All the four were bare-footed, and both princes were in robes much
resembling that of their father, except that upon the left shoulder of
each might be seen, in white cloth, the two lines of the Cross, that
marked them as pilgrims and Crusaders, already on the eve of departure
for the Holy Land.
The shrine where the golden coffin was to rest is substantially the same
in our own day, with its triple-cusped arches below, the stage of six and
stage of four above them, and the twisted columns in imitation of that
which was supposed to have come from the Beautiful Gate of the Temple.
But at that time it was a glittering fabric of mosaic work, in gold,
lapis-lazuli, and precious stones, aided here and there by fragments of
coloured glass, the only part of the costly workmanship that has come
down to us. Around this shrine the preceding members of the procession
had taken their places. Archbishop Boniface of Savoy was there, old age
ennobling a countenance that once had been light and frivolous, and all
his bishops in the splendour of their richest copes, solidly embroidered
with absolute scenes and portraits in embroidery, with tall mitres worked
with gold wire and jewels, and crosiers of beauteous workmanship in gold,
ivory, and enamel. Mitred abbots, no less glorious in array, stood in
another rank; the scarlet-mantled Grand Prior of the Hospital, and the
white-cloaked Templar, made a link between the ecclesiastic and the
warrior. Priests and monks, selected for their voices’ sake, clustered
in every available space; and, in full radiance, on a stage on the
further side, were seated the ladies of the court, mostly with their hair
uncovered, and surrounded by a garland of precious stones. Queen Eleanor
of Provence, still bent on youthfulness, looked somewhat haggard in this
garb; but it well became Beatrix von Falkmorite, the young German girl
whom Richard King of the Romans had wedded in his old age for the sake of
her fair face. Smiling, plump, and rosy, she sat opening her wide blue
eyes, wearing her emerald and ruby wreath as though it had been a coronal
of daisies, and gazing with childish whisperings as she watched the
movements of her king, and clung for direction and help in her own part
of the pageant to the Princess Eleanor, who sat beside her, little the
elder in years, less beautiful in colouring, but how far surpassing her
in queenly pensive grace and dignity! Leaning on Eleanor’s lap was a
bright-eyed, bright-haired boy of four years old, watching with puzzled
looks the brilliant ceremony, which he only half understood, and his
glances wandering between his father and the blue and white robed little
acolytes who stood nearest to the shrine, holding by chains the silver
censers, which from time to time sent forth a fragrant vapour, curling
round the heads of the nearest figures, and floating away in the lofty
vaultings of the roof.
The actual ceremony could only be beheld by a favoured few; the official
clergy, the many connections of royalty, and the chief nobility, filled
the church to overflowing, but the rest of the world repaid itself by
making a magnificent holiday. Good-natured King Henry had been permitted
by his son, who had now, though behind the scenes, assumed the reins of
government, to spend freely, and make a feast to his heart’s content.
Roasting and boiling were going on on a fast and furious scale, not only
in the palace and abbey, but in booths erected in the fields; and tables
were spreading and rushes strewing for the accommodation of all ranks.
Near the entrance of the Abbey, the trains of the personages within
awaited their coming forth in some sort of order, the more reverent
listening to the sounds from within, and bending or crossing themselves
as the familiar words of higher notes of praise rose loud enough to reach
their ears; but for the most part, the tones and gestures were as various
as the appearance of the attendants. Here were black Benedictines, there
white Augustinians clustered round the sleek mules of their abbots; there
scornful dark Templars, in their black and white, sowed the seeds of
hatred against their order, and scarlet Hospitaliers looked bright and
friendly even while repelling the jostling of the crowd. A hoary old
squire, who had been with the King through all his troubles, kept
together his immediate attendants; a party of boorish-looking Germans
waited for Richard of Cornwall; and the slender, richly-caparisoned
palfreys of the ladies were in charge of high-born pages, who sometimes,
with means fair or foul, pushed back the throng, sometimes themselves
became enamoured of its humours.
For not only had the neighbouring city of London poured forth her
merchants and artizans, to gaze, wonder, and censure the extravagance—not
only had beggars of every degree been attracted by the largesse that
Henry delighted to dispense, and peasants had poured in from all the
villages around, but no sort of entertainment was lacking. Here were
minstrels and story-tellers gathering groups around them; here was the
mountebank, clearing a stage in which to perform feats of jugglery,
tossing from one hand to another a never-ending circle of balls,
balancing a lance upon his nose, with a popinjay on its point; here were
a bevy of girls with strange garments fastened to their ankles, who would
dance on their hands instead of their feet, while their uplifted toes
jangled little bells.
Peasant and beggar, citizen and performer, sightseer and professional,
all alike strove to get into the space before the great entrance, where
the procession must come forth to gratify the eyes of the gazers, and
mayhap shower down such bounty as the elder mendicants averred had been
given when Prince Edward (the saints defend him!) had been weighed at
five years old, and, to avert ill luck, the counterbalance of pure gold
had been thrown among the poor to purchase their prayers.
His weight in gold at his present stature could hardly be expected by the
wildest imaginations, but hungry eyes had been estimating the weight of
his little heir, and discontented lips had declared that the child was of
too slender make to be ever worth so much to them as his father. Yet a
whisper of the possibility had quickly been magnified to a certainty of
such a largesse, and the multitude were thus stimulated to furious
exertions to win the most favourable spot for gathering up such a golden
rain as even little Prince Henry’s counterpoise would afford; and ever as
time waxed later, the throng grew denser and more unruly, and the
struggle fiercer and more violent.
The screams and expostulations of the weak, elbowed and trampled down,
mingled with more festive sounds; and the attendants who waited on the
river in the large and beautifully-ornamented barges which were the usual
conveyances of distinguished personages, began to agree with one another
that if they saw less than if they were on the bank, they escaped a
considerable amount of discomfort as well as danger.
“For,” murmured one of the pages, “I suppose it would be a dire offence
to the Prince to lay about among the churls as they deserve.”
“Ay, truly, among Londoners above all,” was the answer of his companion,
whom the last four years had rendered considerably taller than when we
saw him last.
“Not that there is much love lost between them. He hath never forgotten
the day when they pelted the Queen with rotten eggs, and sang their
ribald songs; nor they the day he rode them down at Lewes like corn
before the reaper.”
“And lost the day,” muttered the other page; then added, “The less love,
the more cause for caution.”
“Oh yes, we know you are politic, Master Richard,” was the sneering
reply, “but you need not fear my quarrelling with your citizen friends.
I would not be the man to face Prince Edward if I had made too free with
any of the caitiffs.”
“Hark! Master Hamlyn, the tumult is louder than ever,” interposed an
elderly man of lower rank, who was in charge of the stout rowers in the
royal colours of red and gold. “Young gentlemen, the Mass must be ended;
it were better to draw to the stairs, than to talk of you know not what,”
he muttered.
Hamlyn de Valence, who held the rudder, steered towards the wide stone
steps that descended to the river, nearest to the apse in which “St.
Peter’s Abbey Church” terminated before Henry VII. had added his chapel.
At that moment a louder burst of sound, half imprecation, half shriek,
was heard; there was a heavy splash a little way above, and a small blue
bundle was seen on the river, apparently totally unheeded by the frantic
crowd on the bank. No sooner was it seen by Richard, however, than he
threw back his mantle and sprang out of the barge. There was a loud cry
from the third page, a little fellow of nine or ten years old; but
Richard gallantly swam out, battled with the current, and succeeded in
laying hold of a young child, with whom he made for the barge, partly
aided by the stream; but he was breathless, and heartily glad to reach
the boat and support himself against the gunwale.
“A pretty boat companion you!” said Hamlyn maliciously. “How are we to
take you in, over the velvet cushions?”
The little page gave an expostulating cry.
“Hold the child an instant, John,” gasped Richard, raising it towards his
younger friend; “I will but recover breath, and then land and seek out
her friends.”
“How is this?” said a voice above them; and looking up, they found that
while all had been absorbed in the rescue, the Prince, with his little
son in his arms and his wife hanging on his arm, had come to the stone
stairs, and was looking down. “Richard overboard!”
“A child fell over the bank, my Lord,” eagerly shouted the little John,
with cap in hand, “and he swam out to pick it up.”
“Into the barge instantly, Richard,” commanded the Prince. “’Tis as much
as his life is worth to remain in this cold stream!”
And truly Richard was beginning to feel as much. He was assisted in by
two of the oarsmen, and the barge then putting towards the steps, the
Princess was handed into her place, and began instantly to ask after the
poor child. It had not been long enough in the water to lose its
consciousness, though it had hitherto been too much frightened to cry;
but it no sooner opened a wide pair of dark eyes to find itself in
strange hands, than it set up a lamentable wail, calling in broken
accents for “Da-da.”
“Let me take it ashore at once, gracious lady,” said Richard, revived by
a draught of wine from the stores provided for the long day; “I will find
its friends.”
“Nay,” said the Princess, “it were frenzy to take it thus in its wet
garments; and frenzy to remain in thine, Richard.” As she spoke, the
Prince and the other persons of the suite had embarked, and the barge was
pushing away from the steps. “Give the child to me,” she added, holding
out her arms, and disregarding a remonstrance from one of her ladies,
disregarding too the sobs and struggles of the child, whom she strove to
soothe, while hastily removing the little thing’s soaked blue frock and
hood, and wrapping it up in a warm woollen cloak. “It is a pretty little
maiden,” she said, “and not ill cared for. Some mother’s heart must be
bursting for her!—Hush thee! hush thee, little one; we will take thee
home and clothe thee, and then thou shalt go to thy mother,” she added,
in better English than she had spoken four years earlier in Alton Wood.
But the child still cried for her da-da, and the Princess asked again,
“What is thy father’s name, little maid?”
“Père,” she answered, with a peculiar accent that made the Prince say,
“That is a Provençal tongue.”
“They are Provençal eyes likewise,” added Eleanor. “See how like their
hue is to Richard’s own;” and in Provençal she repeated the question what
the father’s name and the child’s own might be. But “Père” again, and
“Bessee, pretty Bessee,” was all the answer she obtained, the last in
unmistakable English.
“I thought,” said Eleanor, “that it was only my own children that scarce
knew whether they spoke English, Languédoc, or Languéd’ouì.”
“It was the same with us, Lady,” said Richard. “Father Adam was wont to
say we were a little Babel.”
The child looked towards him on hearing his voice, and held out her hands
to go to him, reiterating an entreaty to be taken to her father.
“She is probably the child of some minstrel or troubadour,” said the
Prince. “We will send in search of him as soon as we have reached the
Savoy.”
The Savoy Palace had been built for Queen Eleanor’s obnoxious uncle,
Prince Thomas of Savoy, and had recently been purchased by the Queen
herself, as a wedding gift for her son Edmund; but in the meantime Edward
and his family were occupying it during their stay near Westminster, and
their barge was brought up to the wide stairs of its noble court.
Richard was obliged to give up the child to the Princess and her ladies,
though she shrieked after him so pertinaciously, that Eleanor called to
him to return so soon as he should have changed his garments.
In a few minutes he again appeared, and found the little girl dressed in
a little garment of one of the royal children, but totally insensible to
the honour, turning away from all the dainties offered to her, and
sobbing for her father, much to the indignation of the two little
princes, Henry and John, who stood hand in hand staring at her. She flew
to him directly, with a broken entreaty that she might be taken to her
father. Again they tried questioning her, but Richard, whether speaking
English or Provençal, always succeeded in obtaining readier and more
comprehensible replies than did the Princess. Whether she recognized him
as her preserver, or whether his language had a familiar tone, she seemed
exclusively attracted by him; and he it was who learnt that she lived at
home—far off—on the Green near the red monks, and that her father could
not see—he would be lost without Bessee to lead him. And the little
creature, hardly three years old if so much, was evidently in the
greatest trouble at her father having lost her guidance and protection.
Richard, touched and flattered by the little maiden’s exclusive
preference, and owning in her Provençal eyes and speech something
strangely like his own young sister Eleanor, entreated permission to be
himself the person to take her in search of her friends. The Princess
added her persuasions, declaring it would be cruel to send the poor
little thing with another stranger, and that his Provençal tongue was
needed in order to discovering her father among the troubadours.
Edward yielded to her persuasion, adding, however, that Richard must take
two men-at-arms with him, and gravely bidding him be on his guard. Nor
would he permit him to be accompanied by little John de Mohun, who, half
page, half hostage, had lately been added to the Princess’s train, and
being often bullied and teased by Hamlyn and his fellows, had vehemently
attached himself to Richard, and now entreated in vain to go with him on
the adventure. In fact, Prince Edward was a stern disciplinarian,
equally severe against either familiarity or insolence towards the
external world, and especially towards any one connected with London. If
Richard ever gave him any offence, it was by a certain freedom of manner
towards inferiors, such as the Earl of Leicester had diligently
inculcated on his family, but which more than once had excited a shade of
vexation on the Prince’s part. Even after Richard had reached the door,
he was called back and commanded on no pretext to loiter or enter on any
dispute, and if his search should detain him late, to sleep at the Tower,
rather than be questioned and stopped at any of the gates which were
guarded at night by the citizens.
CHAPTER V
THE OLD KNIGHT OF THE HOSPITAL
“The warriors of the sacred grave,
Who looked to Christ for laws.”
_Lord Houghton_.
RICHARD summoned a small boat, and with two stout men-at-arms, of whom
Adam de Gourdon was one, prepared again to cross the river. Leonillo ran
down the stone stairs with a wistful look of entreaty and it occurred to
both Richard and Adam, that, could the child only lead them to the place
where her father had sat, the dog’s scent might prove their most
efficient guide.
Little Bessee seemed quite comforted when on her way back to her father,
and sat on Richard’s knee, eating the comfits with which the Princess had
provided her, and making him cut a figure that seemed somewhat to amaze
the other boat-loads whom they encountered on the river.
When they landed, the throng was more dispersed, but revelry and sports
of all kinds were going on fast and furiously; each door of the Abbey was
besieged by hungry crowds receiving their dole, and Richard’s inquiries
for a blind man who had lost his child were little heeded, or met with no
satisfactory answer. Bessee herself was bewildered, and incapable of
finding her father’s late station; and Richard was becoming perplexed,
and doubtful whether he ought to take her back, as well as somewhat put
out of countenance by the laughter of Thomas de Clare, and other young
nobles, who rallied him on his strange charge.
At last the little girl’s face lightened as at sight of something
familiar. “Good red monks,” she said. “They give Bessee soup—make
father well.”
With a ray of hope, Richard advanced to a party of Brethren of St. John,
who were mounting at the Abbey gate to return to their house at
Spitalfields, and doffing his bonnet, intimated a desire to address the
tall old war-worn knight with a benevolent face, who was adjusting his
scarlet cloak, before mounting a gray Arab steed looking as old and
worthy as himself.
“Ha! a young Crusader, I perceive,” was the greeting of the old knight,
as his eye fell on the white cross on Richard’s mantle. “Welcome,
brother! Dost thou need counsel on thy goodly Eastern way?”
“Thanks, reverend Sir,” returned Richard, “but my present purpose was to
seek for the father of this little one, who fell into the river in the
press. She pointed to you, saying she had received your bounty.”
“It is Blind Hal’s child, Sir Robert!” exclaimed a serving-brother in
black, coming eagerly forward; “the villeins on the green told me the
poor knave was distraught at having lost his child in the throng!”
“What brought he her there for?” exclaimed Sir Robert. “Poor fool! his
wits must have forsaken him!”
“The child had a craving to see the show,” replied the Brother, “so Hob
the cobbler told me; and all went well till my Lord of Pembroke’s
retainers forced all right and left to make way in the crowd. Hal was
thrown down, and the child thrust away till they feared she had fallen
over the bank. Hob and his wife were fain to get the poor man away, for
his moans and fierce words were awful: and he was not a little hurt in
the scuffle, so I e’en gave them leave to lay him in the cart that
brought up your reverence’s vestments, and the gear we lent the Abbey for
the show.”
“Right, Brother Hilary,” said Sir Robert; “and now the poor knave will
have his best healing.—He must have been a good soldier once,” he added
to Richard; “but he is a mere fragment of a man, wasted in your Earl of
Leicester’s wars.”
“Where dwells he?” asked Richard, keenly interested in all his father’s
old followers; “I would fain restore him his child.”
“In a hut on Bednall Green,” answered the serving-brother; “but twice or
thrice a week he comes to the Spital to have his hurts looked to.”
“Ay! we tell him his little witch must soon be shut out! She turns the
heads of all our brethren,” said Sir Robert, smiling. “Wild work she
makes with our novices.”
“Wilder with our Knights Commanders, maybe, Sir,” retorted, laughing, a
fair open-faced youth in his novitiate. “I shall some day warn Hal how
our brethren, the Templars, are said to play at ball with tender babes on
their lances.”
“No scandal about our brethren of the Temple, Rayland,” said Sir Robert,
looking grave for a moment.—“Young Sir, it would be a favour if you would
ride with us; we would gladly show you the way to Bednall Green.”
“I should rejoice to go, Sir,” returned Richard, “but I am of Prince
Edward’s household—Richard Fowen; and my horse is on the other side of
the river.”
“That is soon remedied,” said Sir Robert, who seemed to have taken a
great fancy to Richard, either for the sake of his crossed shoulder, or
of his kindness to the little plaything of the Spital. “Our young
brother, Engelbert von Fuchstein, has leave to tarry this night with his
brother in the train of the King of the Romans, and his horse is at your
service, if you will do our poor Spital the favour to tarry there this
night, and ride it back in the morn to meet him at Westminster.”
Richard knew that this invitation might be safely accepted without danger
of giving umbrage to the Prince, who was on the best terms with the
Knights of the Hospital. He therefore dismissed Gourdon and the other
man-at-arms with a message explaining the matter; and warmly thanking the
old Grand Prior, laid one hand on the saddle of the great ponderous beast
that was led up to him, and vaulted on its back without touching the
stirrup.
“Well done, my young master,” said Sir Robert, “it is easy to see you are
of the Prince’s household.”
“I cannot yet do as the Prince can,” said Richard,—“take this leap in
full armour.”
“No; and let me give you a bit of counsel, fair Sir. Such pastimes are
very well for the tiltyard, but they should be laid aside in the blessed
Land, and strength reserved for the one cause and purpose.” He crossed
himself; and in the meantime, Bessee intimated her imperious purpose of
not riding before Brother Hilary, but being perched before Richard on the
enormous cream-coloured animal, whence he was looking down from a
considerable elevation upon Sir Robert on his slender Arab.
“These are the German monsters that our brethren bring over,” said Sir
Robert. “Mark me, young brother, cumber not yourself with these beasts
of Europe, which are good for nothing but food for foul birds in the
East. Purvey yourself of an Arab as soon as you land. There is a rogue
at Acre, one Ali by name, who will not cheat you more than is reasonable,
so you mention my name to him, Sir Robert Darcy, at your service.”
“Thanks, reverend Father,” returned Richard, “but I am but a landless
page, and the Prince mounts me. Said you this poor man had been wounded
in the late wars?”
“Ay, hacked and hewed worse than by the Infidels themselves! Woeful it
is that here, at home, men’s blood should be wasted on your own petty
feuds. This same Barons’ war now hath cost as much downright courage as
would have brought us back to Jerusalem, and all thrown away, without a
cause, with no honour, no hope.”
“Not without a cause,” Richard could not help saying.
“Nay,” said the old knight; “no cause is worth the taking of a life, save
the cause of the Holy Sepulchre. What be these matters of taxes and laws
to ask a man to shed his blood for? Alack, the temper of the
cross-bearer is dying out! I pray I may not see this Crusade end like
half those I have beheld—and the cross on the shoulder become no better
than a mockery.”
“That may scarcely be with such leaders as the Prince and the King of
France,” said Richard.
“Well, well, the Prince is untried; and for King Louis, he is as holy a
man as ever lived since King Godfrey of blessed memory, but he has bad
luck, ever bad luck. The Saints forefend, but I trow he will listen to
some crazy counsel from Rome, belike, or some barefooted hermit—very
holy, no doubt, but who does not know a Greek from a Saracen, or a
horse’s head from his tail—and will go to some pestilential hole like
that foul Egyptian swamp, where we stayed till our skin was the colour of
an old boot, in hopes of converting the Sultan of Babylon, or the Old Man
of the Mountain, or what not, and there he will stay till the flower of
his forces have wasted away.”
“Were you in Egypt with King Louis?” eagerly exclaimed Richard.
“Ay, marry, was I, and a goodly land it is; but I saw many a good
man-at-arms perish miserably in a marsh, who might have been the saving
of the Holy City. Why, I myself have never been the same man since!
Never could do a month’s service out of the infirmary at Acre, though
after all there’s no work I like so well as the hospital business, and
for the last five years I have had to stay here training young brethren!
Oh, young man! I envy you your first stroke for the Holy Sepulchre!
Would that the Grand-Master would hear my entreaty. I am too old to be
worth sparing, and I would fain have one more chance of dying under the
banner of the Order!—But I am setting you a bad example, son Raynal; a
Hospitalier has no will.—And look you, young Sir Page, if you stay out at
sunset in that clime, ’tis all up with you. And you should veil your
helmet well, or the sun smites on your head as deadly as a flake of Greek
fire.”
So rambled on good old Sir Robert Darcy, Grand Prior of England, a
perfect dragon among the Saracens, but everywhere else the mildest and
most benevolent of men; his discourse strangely mingling together the
deepest enthusiasm with a business-like common-sense appreciation of ways
and means, and with minute directions, precautions, and anecdotes,
gathered from his practical experience both as captain in the field,
priest in the Church, and surgeon in the hospital, and all seen from the
most sunshiny point of view.
Meanwhile, they were riding along the Strand, a beautiful open road, with
grassy borders shelving down to the Thames. They passed through the City
of London. The Hospital lay beyond the walls, but the Marshes of
Moorfields that protected them were not passable without a long circuit;
and the fortified gates stood open at Temple Bar, where the Hospitaliers,
looking towards the Round Church and stately buildings of the Preceptory,
saluted the white-cloaked figures moving about it, with courtesy grim and
distant in all but Sir Robert Darcy, who could not even hate a Templar, a
creature to the ordinary Hospitalier far more detestable than a Saracen.
On then, up ground beginning to rise, below which the little muddy stream
called the Flete stagnated along its way, meandering to the Thames.
Thatched hovels and wooden booths left so narrow a passage that the
horsemen were forced to move in single file, and did not gain a clearer
space even when the stone houses of merchants began to stand thick on
Ludgate Hill, their carved wooden balconies so projecting, that it would
seem to have been an object with the citizens to be able to shake hands
across the street. The city was comparatively empty and quiet, as all
the world were keeping holiday at Westminster; but even as it was, the
passengers seemed to swarm in the streets, and knots of persons who had
been unable to witness the spectacle, sat with gazing children upon the
stairs outside the houses, to admire the fragments of the pageant that
came their way. Acclamations of delight greeted the appearance of the
scarlet-mantled Hospitaliers, such as Richard had often heard in his
boyhood, when riding in his father’s train, but far less frequently since
he had been a part of the Prince’s retinue. And equally diverse was the
merry nod and smile of Sir Robert to each gaping shouting group of little
ones, from the stately distant courtesy with which Edward returned the
popular salutations. He could be gracious—he could not be friendly
except to a few.
They passed the capitular buildings of St. Paul’s, with the beautiful
cathedral towering over them, and in its rear, numerous booths for the
purchase of rosaries—recent inventions then of St. Dominic, the great
friend of Richard’s stern grandfather, the persecutor of the Albigenses.
Sir Robert drew up, and declared he must buy one for the little maid as a
remembrance of the day, and then found she was fast asleep; but he
nevertheless purchased a black-beaded chaplet, giving for it one of the
sorely-clipped coins of King Henry.
“Prithee let me have one likewise, holy Sir,” quoth Richard, “in memory
of the talk that hath taught me so much of the import of my crusading
vow.”
“Thou shalt bring me for it one of the olive of Bethlehem,” said Sir
Robert; “I have given away all I brought from the East. They are so
great a boon to our poor sick folk that I wish I had brought twice as
many, but to me they have always a Saracen look. Your Moslem always
fingers one much of the same fashion as he parleys.”
Ludgate, freshly built, and adorned with new figures to represent the
fabulous King Lud, was not yet closed for the night; and the party came
forth beyond the walls, with the desolate Moorfields to their left, and
before them a number of rising villages clustered round their churches.
The Hospital, a grand fortified monastery, was already to be seen over
the fields; but Sir Robert, sending home the rest of his troop, turned
aside with Richard and Brother Hilary towards the common, with a border
of cottages around it, which went by the name of Bednall Green.
Brother Hilary knew the hut inhabited by Blind Hal, and led the way to
it. Low and mud-built, thatched, and with a wattled door, it had a
wretched appearance; but the old woman who came to the door was not ill
clad. “Blessings on you, holy Father!” she cried; “do I see the child,
my lamb, my lady-bird! Would that she may come in time to cheer her poor
father!”
“How is it with him then, Gammer?” demanded Sir Robert, springing to the
ground with the alacrity of a doctor anxious about his patient.
“Ill, very ill, Sir. Whether the horse’s feet hurt his old wound, or
whether it be the loss of the child, he hath done nought but moan and
rave, and lie as one dead ever since they brought him home. He is lying
in one of the dead swoons now! It were not well that the child saw him.”
But Bessee, awakening with a cry of joy, saw her borne, and struggled to
go to her father, whose name she called on with all her might,
disregarding the caresses of the old woman, and the endeavour made by
Richard to restrain without alarming her, while Sir Robert went into the
hut to endeavour to restore the sufferer.
Suddenly a cry broke from within; and Richard, turning at the voice,
beheld the blind man sitting up on his pallet with arms outstretched.
“My child!—My Father! hast thou brought her to visit me in limbo?” he
cried.
“He raves!” said Richard, using his strength to withhold the child, who
broke out into a shriek.
“Nay, nay! she doth not abide here!” he exclaimed. “Her spirit is pure!
My sins are not visited on her beyond the grave!”
“Thou art on the earthly side of the grave still, my son,” said Sir
Robert, at the same time as Bessee sprang from Richard, and nestled on
his breast, clinging to his neck.
“My babe—my Bessee!” he exclaimed, gathering her close to him. “Living,
living, indeed! Yet how may it be! Surely this is the other world.
That voice sounds not among the living!”
“It is the voice of the youth who saved thy child,” said the Grand Prior.
“Speak again! Let him speak again!” implored the beggar.
“Can I do aught for you, good man?” asked Richard.
Again there was a strange start and thrill of amazement.
“Only for Heaven’s sake tell me who thou art!”
“A page of Prince Edward’s good man. I am called Richard Fowen! And
who, for Heaven’s sake, are you?” added Richard, as Leonillo, who had
been smelling about and investigating, threw himself on the blind man in
a transport of caresses. “Off, Leon—off!” cried Richard. “It is but a
dog!—Fear not, little one!—Tell me, tell me,” he added, trembling, as he
knelt before the miserable object, holding back the eager Leonillo with
one arm round his neck, “who art thou, thou ghost of former times?”
“Knowst me not, Richard?” returned a suppressed voice in Provençal.
“Henry! Henry!” exclaimed Richard, and fell upon the foot of the low
bed, weeping bitterly. “Is it come to this?”
“Ay, even to this,” said the blind man, “that two sons of one father meet
unknown—one with a changed name, the other with none at all, neither with
the honoured one they were born to.”
“Alack, alack!” was all Richard could say at the first moment, as he
lifted himself up to look again at the first-born of his parents, the
head of the brave troop of brethren, the gay, handsome, imperious young
Lord de Montfort, whose proud head and gallant bearing he had looked at
with a younger brother’s imitative deference. What did he see but a
wreck of a man, sitting crouched on the wretched bed, the left arm a mere
stump, a bandage where the bright sarcastic eyes used to flash forth
their dark fire, deep scars on all the small portion of the face that was
visible through the over-grown masses of hair and beard, so plentifully
sprinkled with white, that it would have seemed incredible that this man
was but eight months older than the Prince, whose rival he had always
been in personal beauty and activity. The beautiful child, clasped close
to his breast, her face buried on his shoulder under his shaggy locks,
was a strange contrast to his appearance, but only added to the look of
piteous helplessness and desolation, as she hung upon him in her alarm at
the agitation around her.
Richard had long been accustomed to think of his brother as dead; but
such a spectacle as this was far more terrible to him, and his cheek
blanched at the shock, as he gasped again, “Thou here, and thus! thou
whom I thought slain!”
“Deem me so still,” said his brother, “even as I deem the royal minion
dead to me.”
“Nay, Henry, thou knowst not.”
“Who is present?” interrupted the blind man, raising his head and tossing
back his hair with a gesture that for the first time gave Richard a sense
that his eldest brother was indeed before him. “Methought I heard
another voice.”
“I am here, fair son,” replied the old knight, “Father Robert of the
Hospital! I will either leave thee, or keep thy secret as though it were
thy shrift; but thou art sore spent, and mayst scarce talk more.”
“Weariness and pain are past, Father, with my little one again in my
bosom,” said Henry; “and there are matters that must be spoken between me
and this young brother of mine ere he quits this hut;” and his voice
resumed its old authoritative tone towards Richard. “Said you that he
had saved my child?”
“He drew me from the river, Father,” said Bessee looking up. “There was
nothing to stand on, and it was so cold! And he took me in his arms and
pulled me out, and put me in a boat; and the lady pulled off my blue
coat, and put this one on me. Feel it, Father; oh, so pretty, so warm!”
“It was the Princess,” said Richard; but Henry, not noticing, continued,
“Thou hast earned my pardon, Richard,” and held out his remaining hand,
somewhere towards the height where his brother’s used to be.
Sir Robert smiled, saying, “Thou dost miscalculate thy brother’s stature,
son.” And at the same moment Richard, who was now little short of his
Cousin Edward in height, was kneeling by Henry, accepting and returning
his embrace with agitation and gratitude, such as showed how their
relative positions in the family still maintained their force; but
Richard still asserted his independence so as to say, “When you have
heard all, brother you will see that there is no need of pardoning me.”
Henry, however, as perhaps Sir Robert had foreseen, instead of answering
put his hand to his side, and sank back in a paroxysm of pain, ending in
another swoon. The child stood by, quiet and frightened but too much
used to similar occurrences to be as much terrified as was Richard, who
thought his brother dying; but calling in the serving-brother, the old
Hospitalier did all that was needed, and the blind man presently
recovered and explained in a feeble voice that he had been jostled,
thrown down, and trodden on, at the moment when he lost his hold of his
little daughter; and this was evidently renewing his sufferings from the
effect of an injury received in battle. “And what took thee there, son?”
said Sir Robert, somewhat sharply.
“The harvest, Father,” answered Henry, rousing himself to speak with a
certain sarcasm in his tone. “It is the beggars’ harvest wherever King
Henry goes. We brethren of the wallet cannot afford to miss such
windfalls.”
“A beggar!” exclaimed Richard in horror.
“And what art thou?” retorted Henry, with a sudden fierceness.
“Listen, young men,” said Sir Robert, “this I know, my patient there will
soon be nothing if ye continue in this strain. A litter shall bring him
to the infirmary.”
“Nay,” said Henry hastily, “not so, good Father. Here I abide, hap what
may.”
“And I abide with him,” said Richard.
“Not so, I say,” returned the Hospitalier, “unless thou wouldst slay him
outright. Return to the Spital with me; and at morn, if he have
recovered himself, unravel these riddles as thou and he will.”
“It is well, Father,” said Henry. “Go with him, Richard; but mark me.
Be silent as the grave, and see me again.”
And reluctant as he was, Richard was forced to comply.
CHAPTER VI
THE BEGGAR EARL
“Along with the nobles that fell at that tyde,
His eldest son Henrye, who fought by his syde,
Was felde by a blow he receivde in the fight;
A blow that for ever deprivde him of sight.”
_Old Beggar_.
THE chapel at the Spital was open to all who chose to attend. The deep
choir was filled with the members of the Order, half a dozen knights in
the stalls, and the novices and serving-brothers so ranged as to give
full effect to the body of voice. Richard knelt on the stone floor
outside the choir, intending after early mass to seek his brother; but to
his surprise he found the blind man with his child at his feet in what
was evidently his accustomed place, just within the door. His hair and
beard were now arranged, his appearance was no longer squalid; but when
he rose to depart, guided in part by the child, but also groping with a
stick, he looked even more helpless than on his bed, and Richard sprang
forward to proffer an arm for his support.
“Flemish cloth and frieze gown,” said the object of his solicitude in a
strange gibing voice; “court page and street beggar—how now, my master?”
“Lord Earl and elder brother,” returned Richard, “thine is my service
through life.”
“Mine? Ho, ho! That much for thy service!” with a disdainful gesture of
his fingers. “A strapping lad like thee would be the ruin of my trade.
I might as well give up bag and staff at once.”
“Nay, surely, wilt thou not?” exclaimed Richard in broken words from his
extreme surprise. “The King and Prince only long to pardon and restore,
and—”
“And thou wouldst well like to lord it at Kenilworth, earl in all but the
name? Thou mayst do so yet without being cumbered with me or mine!”
“Thou dost me wrong, Henry,” said Richard, much distressed. “I love the
Prince, for none so truly honoured our blessed father as he, and for his
sake he hath been most kind lord to me; but thou art the head of my
house, my brother, and with all my heart do I long to render thee such
service as—as may lighten these piteous sufferings.”
“I believe thee, Richard; thou wert ever an honest simple-hearted lad,”
said Henry, in a different tone; “but the only service thou canst render
me is to let me alone, and keep my secret. Here—I feel that we are at
the stone bench, where I bask in the sun, and lay out my dish for the
visitors of the gracious Order.—Here, Bessee, child, put the dish down,”
he added, retaining his hold of his brother, as if to feel whether
Richard winced at this persistence in his strange profession. The little
girl obeyed, and betook herself to the quiet sports of a lonely child,
amusing herself with Leonillo, and sometimes returning to her father and
obtaining his attention for a few moments, sometimes prattling to some
passing brother of the Order, who perhaps made all the more of the pretty
creature because this might be called an innocent breach of discipline.
“And now, Master Page,” said Henry in his tone of authority, yet with
some sarcasm, “let us hear how long-legged Edward finished the work he
had began on thee at Hereford—made thee captive in the battle, eh?”
Richard briefly narrated his life with Gourdon, and his capture by the
Prince, adding, “My mother was willing I should remain with him; she bade
me do anything rather than join Simon and Guy; and verily, brother, save
that the Prince is less free of speech, his whole life seems moulded upon
our blessed father’s—”
“Speak not of them in the same breath,” cried Henry hastily. “And
wherefore—if such be his honour to him whom he slew and mutilated—art
thou to disown thy name, and stand before him like some chance
foundling?”
“That was the King’s doing,” said Richard. “The Prince was averse to it,
but King Henry, though he wept over me and called me his dear nephew,
made it his special desire that he might not hear the name of Montfort;
and the Prince, though overruling him in all that pertains to matters of
state, is most dutiful in all lesser matters. I hoped at least to be
called Fitz Simon, but some mumble of the King turned it into Fowen, and
so it has continued. I believe no one at court is really ignorant of my
lineage; but among the people, Montfort is still a trumpet-call, and the
King fears to hear it.”
“Well he may!” laughed Henry. “Rememberest thou, Richard, the sorry
figure our good uncle cut, when we armed him so courteously, and put him
on his horse to meet the rebels at Evesham—how he durst not hang back,
and loved still less to go onward, and kept calling me his loving nephew
all the time?”
“Ah! Henry—but didst thou not hear my father mutter, when he saw the
crowned helm under the standard, that it was ill done, and no good could
come of seething the kid in the mother’s milk? And verily, had not the
Prince been carrying his father from the field, I trow the Mortimers had
not refused us quarter, nor had their cruel will of us.”
“Oh ho! thou art come to have opinions of thine own!” laughed Henry, with
the scoff of a senior unable to brook that his younger brother should
think for himself. Yet this tone was so familiar to Richard’s ears, that
it absolutely encouraged him to a nearer step to intimacy. He said, “But
how scapedst thou, Henry? I could have sworn that I saw thee fall, skull
and helmet cleft, a dead man!”
Instead of answering, Henry put his hand under the chin of his child, who
was leaning against him, and holding up her face to his brother, said,
“Thou canst see this child’s face? Tell me what like she is.”
“Like little Eleanor, like Amaury. The home-look of her eyes won my
heart at once. Even the Princess remarked their resemblance to mine.
Think of Eleanor and thy mind’s eye will see her.”
“No other likeness?” said the blind man wistfully; “but no—thou wast at
Hereford when she was at Odiham.”
“Who?”
He grasped Richard’s hand, and under his breath uttered the name
“Isabel.”
“Isabel Mortimer!” exclaimed Richard, who had been, of course, aware of
his brother’s betrothal, when the two families of Montfort and Mortimer
had been on friendly terms; “we heard she had taken the veil!”
“And so thou sawst me slain!” said Henry de Montfort dryly.
“But how—how was it?” asked Richard eagerly.
“Men sometimes tie knots faster than they intend,” said Henry. “When
Roger Mortimer took Simon’s doings in wrath, and vowed that his sister
should never wed a Montfort, he knew not what he did. He and his proud
wife could flout and scorn my Isabel—they might not break her faith to
me. Thou knowst, perhaps, Richard, since thou art hand and glove with
our foes, that like a raven to the slaughter, the Lady Mortimer came as
near the battle-field as her care for her dainty person would allow; and
there was one whom she brought with her. And, gentle dame, what doth she
do but carry her sister-in-law a sweet and womanly gift? What thinkst
thou it was, Richard?”
“I fear I know,” said Richard, choked; “my father’s hand.”
“Nay, that was a choicer morsel reserved for my lady countess herself.
It was mine own, with our betrothal-ring thereon. Now, quoth that loving
sister, might Isabel resume her ring. No plighted troth could be her
excuse any longer for refusing to wed my Lord of Gloucester. Then rose
up my love, ‘It beckons me!’ she said, and bade them leave it with her.
They deemed that it was for death that it beckoned. So mayhap did she.
I wot Countess Maud had little grieved. But little dreamed they of her
true purpose—my perfect jewel of constant love—namely, to restore the
lopped hand to the poor corpse, that it might likewise have Christian
burial. Her old nurse, Welsh Winny, was as true to her as she was to me;
and forth they sped, fearless of the spoilers, and made their way at
nightfall even to the Abbey Church, where Edward, less savage than the
fair countess, had caused us to be laid before the altar, awaiting our
burial in the vaults.”
“Thou wert senseless all this time?”
“Ay, and so continued. The pang when my hand was severed had roused me
for a few moments, but only to darkness; and my effort to speak had been
rewarded with as many Welsh knives as could pierce my flesh at once.”
“And thou didst not bleed to death?”
“The swoon checked my blood. And the monks of Evesham must have
staunched and bandaged so as to make a decent corpse of me. Had they had
a man-at-arms among them, they would have known that mine were not the
wounds of a dead but of a living man. The old nurse knew it, when my
sweet lady would needs unbind my wrist, to place my hand in its right
place. An old crone such as Welsh Winny never stirs without her cordial
potion. They poured it into my lips—and if I were never more to awake to
the light of day, I awoke to the sound that was yet dearer to me—while,
alas! it still was left to me.”
He became silent, till Richard’s question drew him on.
“What with their care and support, when once on my feet I found strength
to stumble out of the chapel and gain shelter in the woods ere day; and I
believe the monks got credit for their zeal in casting out the
excommunicate body.”
“Not credit,” said Richard; “the Prince was full of grief, more
especially as they all disavowed the deed. But, brother, art thou
excommunicate still?”
“Far from it, most pious Crusader. If seas of holy wells could assoil
me, I should be pure enough. My sweet Isabel deemed that some such
washing might bring back mine eyesight; and from one to another we
wandered as my limbs could bear it. And at St. Winifred’s there was a
priest who told us strange tales of the miracles wrought in the Mortimer
household by my father’s severed hand; nay, that it had so worked on Lord
Mortimer’s sister, that she had left the vanities of the world, and gone
into a nunnery. He seemed so convinced of my father’s saintliness, and
so honest a fellow, that Isabel insisted on unbosoming ourselves to him
under seal of confession. No longer was the old nurse to be my mother
and she my sister; and the good man made no difficulties, but absolved
me, and wedded me to the truest, most loving wife that ever blessed a man
bereft of all else.”
“And you begged! O Henry, the noble lady—”
“At first we had the knightly chain and spurs in which the monks had
kindly pranked me up. Isabel too had worn a few jewels; but after all, a
palmer need never hunger. My father always said no trade was so well
paid as begging, under King Henry, and verily we found it so. She used
at times to gather berries and thread them for chaplets to sell at the
holy wells; but I trow sheer beggary throve better!”
“But wherefore? Even had pardon not been ready, Simon held out
Kenilworth for months.”
Henry laughed his dry laugh.
“Simple boy, dost think I would trust Simon with an elder brother whose
hand could no longer keep his head?”
“And my mother—”
“She had always hated the Mortimers, even when the contract was matter of
policy. Would I have taken my sweet Isabel to abide her royal scorn, it
might be incredulity of our marriage? Though for that matter it is more
unimpeachable than her own! Nay, nay, out of ken and out of reach was
our only security from our kin on either side, unless we desired that my
head should follow my hand as a dainty dish for Countess Maud.”
“How could the lady brook it?”
“She dyed her fair skin with walnut, wore russet gown and hood, and was a
very nightingale for blitheness and sweet song through that first year,”
said Henry; “blither than ever when that little one was born in the
sunshiny days of Whitsuntide. I tell thee, those were happier days than
ever I passed as Lord de Montfort at Kenilworth. But after that, the
bruised hurt in my side, which had never healed when the cleaner gashes
did, became more painful and troublesome. Holy wells did nothing for it;
and she wasted with watching it, as though my pain had been hers. Naught
would serve her but coming here, because she had been told that the
Knights of St. John had better experience of old battle-wounds than any
men in the realm. Much ado had we to get here—the young babe in her
arms, and I well-nigh distraught with pain. We crept into this same hut,
and I had a weary sickness throughout the winter—living, I know not how,
by the bounty of the Spital, and by the works of her fingers, which Winny
would take out to sell on feast-days in the city. Oh that eyes had been
left me to note how she pined away! but I had scarce felt how thin and
bony were her tender fingers ere the blasts of the cruel March wind
finished the work.”
“Alack! alack! poor Henry,” said Richard; “never, never was lady of
romaunt so noble, and so true!”
“No more,” said Henry hastily, leaning his brow on the top of his staff.
“Come hither, Bessee,” he added after a brief pause; “say thy prayer for
thy blessed mother, child.”
And holding out his one hand, he inclosed her two clasped ones within it,
as the little voice ran over an utterly unintelligible form of childishly
clipped Latin, sounding, however, sweet and birdlike from the very
liberties the little memory had taken in twisting its mellifluous words
into a rhythm of her own. And there was catchword enough for Richard to
recognize and follow it, with bonnet doffed, and crossing himself.
“And now,” he said, “surely the need for secrecy is ended. The land is
tranquil, the King ruled by the Prince, the Prince owning all the past
folly and want of faith that goaded our father into resistance.
Wherefore not seek his willing favour? Thou art ever a pilgrim. Be with
us in the crusade. Who knows what the Jordan waves may effect for thee?”
“No, no,” grimly laughed Henry. “Dost think any favour would make it
tolerable to be wept over and pitied by the King—pitied by _the King_,”
he repeated in ineffable disgust; “or to be the show of the court, among
all that knew me of old, when I _was_ a man? Hob the cobbler, and Martin
the bagster, are better company than Pembroke and Gloucester, and I meet
with more humours on Cheapside than I should at Winchester—more regard
too. Why, they deem me threescore years old at least, and I am a very
oracle of wisdom among them. Earl of Leicester, forsooth! he would be
nobody compared with Blind Hal! And as to freedom—with child and staff
the whole country and city are before me—no shouts to dull retainers, and
jackanape pages to set my blind lordship on horseback, without his bridle
hand, and lead him at their will anywhere but at his own.
“All this I can understand for thyself,” said Richard; “but for thy
child’s sake canst thou not be moved?”
“My child, quotha? What, when her Uncle Simon is true grandson to King
John?”
Richard started. “I cannot believe what thou sayest of Simon,” he
answered in displeasure.
“One day thou wilt,” calmly answered Henry; “but I had rather not have it
proved upon the heiress of Leicester and Montfort.”
“Leicester is forfeit—Simon an outlawed man.”
“If the humour for pardon is set in, Cousin Edward is no man to do things
by halves. If he owned me at all, the lands would be mine again, and
such a bait would be smelt out by Simon were he at the ends of the earth.
Or if not, that poor child would be granted to any needy kinsman or
grasping baron that Edward wanted to portion. My child shall be my own,
and none other’s. Better a beggar’s brat than an earl’s heiress!”
“She is a lovely little maiden. I know not how thou canst endure letting
her grow up in poverty, an alien from her birth and rank.”
“Poverty,” Henry laughed. “Little knowest thou of the jolly beggar’s
business! I would fain wager thee, Richard, that pretty Bessee’s
marriage-portion shall be a heavier bag of gold than the Lady Elizabeth
de Montfort would gather by all the aids due to her father from his
vassals—and won moreover without curses.”
“But who would be the bridegroom?”
“Her own choice, not the King’s,” answered Henry briefly.
“And this is all,” said Richard, perceiving that according to the
previous day’s agreement the cream-coloured elephant of a German horse
was being led forth for his use, and Sir Robert preparing to accompany
him. “I must leave thee in this strange condition?”
“Ay, that must thou. Betray me, and thou shalt have the curse of the
head of thine house. Had thy voice not become so strangely like my
father’s, I had never made myself known to thee.”
“I will see thee again.”
“That will be as thou canst. I trow Edward hardly gives freedom enough
to his pages for them to pay visits unknown,” replied Henry, with a
strange sneering triumph in his own wild liberty.
“If aught ails thee, if I can aid thee, swear to me that thou wilt send
to me.”
Henry laughed with somewhat of a tone of mockery, adding, “Well,
well—keep thou thy plight to me so long as I want thee not, and I will
keep mine to thee if ever I should need thee. Now away with thee. I
hear the horses impatient for thee; and what would be the lot of the
beggar if he were seen chattering longer with a lordly young page than
might suffice for his plaint? I hear voices. Put a tester in my dish,
fair Sir, for appearance’ sake. Thou hast it not? aha—I told thee I was
the richer as well as the freer man. What’s that? That is no ring of
coin.”
“’Tis a fair jewel, father, green and sparkling,” cried Bessee.
“Nay, nay, I’ll have none of it. Some token from thy new masters? Ha,
boy?”
“From the Princess, on New Year’s Day,” replied Richard. “But keep it,
oh, keep it, Henry; it breaks my heart to leave thee thus.”
“Keep it! Not I. What wouldst say to thy dainty dame? Nor should I get
half its value from the Jews. No, no, take back thy jewel, Sir Page;
I’ll not put thee in need of telling more lies than becomes thine
office.”
Richard glowed with irritation; but what was the use of anger with a
blind beggar? And while Henry bestowed far more demonstration of
affection on Leonillo than on his brother, it became needful to mount and
ride off, resolving to tell the Prince and Princess, what would be no
falsehood, that the child belonged to a Kenilworth man-at-arms, sorely
wounded at Evesham, and at present befriended by the Knights of St. John.
Old Sir Robert Darcy knew so much that it was needful to confide fully in
him; and he gave Richard some satisfaction by a promise to watch over his
brother as far as was possible with a man of such uncertain vagrant
habits; and he likewise engaged to let him know, even in the Holy Land,
of any change in the beggar’s condition; and this, considering the
wide-spread connections of the Order, and that some of its members were
sure to be in any crusading army, was all that Richard could reasonably
hope.
“Canst write?” asked Sir Robert.
“Yea, Father.”
“I could once! But if there be need to send thee a scroll, I’ll take
care it is writ by a trusty hand.”
More than this Richard could not hope. There had always been a strange
self-willed wildness of character about his eldest brother, who, though
far less violent and overbearing in actual deed than the two next in age,
Simon and Guy, had contrived to incur even greater odium than they, by
his mocking careless manner and love of taunts and gibing. Simon de
Montfort the elder had indeed strangely failed in the bringing up of his
sons. Whether it were that their royal connection had inflated them with
pride, or that the King’s indulgence had counteracted the good effects of
the admirable education provided for them at home, they had done little
justice to their parentage, or to their tutor, the excellent Robert
Grostête. Perhaps the Earl himself was too affectionate: perhaps his
occupation in public affairs hindered him from enforcing family
discipline. At any rate, neither of the elder three could have been
naturally endowed with his largeness of mind, and high unselfish views.
He was a man before his age; not only deeply pious, but with a devoted
feeling for justice and mercy carried into all the details of life, till
his loyalty to the law overcame his loyalty to the King. Simon and Guy,
on the other hand, were commonplace young nobles of the thirteenth
century, heedless of all but themselves, and disdaining all beneath them;
and when their father had seized the reins of government in order to
enforce the laws that the King would not observe, they saw in his
elevation a means of gratifying themselves, and being above all law. The
cry throughout England had been that Simon’s “sons made themselves vile,
and he restrained them not.”
Henry de Montfort had not indeed, like his brothers, plundered the ships
in the Channel, extorted money from peaceful yeomen, nor insulted the
poor old captive King to his face; but his deference had been more
galling than their defiance; his scornful smiles and keen cutting jests
had mortally offended many a partizan; and when positive work was to be
done, Simon with all his fierceness and cruelty was far more to be
depended on than Henry, who might at any time fly off upon some
incalculable freak. To Richard’s boyish recollection, if Simon had been
the most tyrannical towards him in deed, Henry had been infinitely more
annoying and provoking in the lesser arts of teasing.
And looking back on the past, he could understand how intolerable a life
of helplessness would be among the equals whom Henry had so often stung
with his keen wit, and that to a man of his peculiar tone of mind there
was infinitely more liberty in thus sinking to the lowest depths, where
his infirmities were absolute capital to him, than in being hedged about
with the restraints of his rank. Any way, it was impossible to
interfere, even for the child’s sake, and all Richard could do to console
himself was to look forward to his return from the Crusade an esquire or
even a knight, with exploits that Henry might respect—a standing in the
Court that would give him some right to speak—perhaps in time a home and
lady wife to whom his brother would intrust his child, who would then be
growing out of a mere toy. Or might not his services win him a fresh
grant of the earldom, and could he not then prove his sincerity by laying
it at the true Earl’s feet?
Pretty Bessee, too! Richard remembered stories current in the family, of
their grandmother, Amicia, Countess of Leicester in her own right, being
forced when a young girl to wed the stern grim old persecuting Simon de
Montfort, and how vain had been her struggles against her doom. He lost
himself in graceful romantic visions of the young knight whose love he
would watch and foster, and whose marriage to his lovely niece should be
securely concluded ere her rank should be made known, when her guardian
uncle would yield all to her. And from that day forth Richard looked out
with keen eyes among the playfellows of the little princes for Bessee’s
future knight.
CHAPTER VII
AMONG THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE
“But man is more than law, and I may have
Some impress of myself upon the world;
One poor brief life, helping to feed the flame
Of chivalry, and keep alive the truth
That courage, honour, mercy, make a knight.”
_Queen Isabel_, _by S. M._
“LAND in sight! Cheer up, John, my man!” said Richard, leaning over a
bundle of cloaks that lay on the deck of a Genoese galley.
The cross floated high aloft, accompanied by the lions of English
royalty; the bulwark was hung round with blazoned shields, and the
graceful white sails were filled by a gay breeze that sent the good ship
dancing over the crested waves of the Mediterranean, in company with many
another of her gallant sisters, crowded with the chivalry of England.
Woeful was however the plight of great part of that chivalry. Merrily
merrily bounded the bark, but her sport felt very like death to many of
her freight, and among others to poor little John de Mohun.
His father, Baron Mohun of Dunster, had been deeply implicated in the
Barons’ Wars, and had been a personal friend of the Earl of Leicester,
from whom he had only separated himself in consequence of the outrageous
exactions and acts of insolence perpetrated by the young Montforts. He
had indeed received a disabling wound while fighting on the Prince’s side
at Evesham; but his submission had been thought so insecure that his son
and heir had been required of him, ostensibly as page, but really as
hostage.
In spite of his Norman surname, little John of Dunster was, at twelve
years old, a sturdy thoroughgoing English lad, with the strongest
possible hatred to all foreigners, whom with grand indifference to
natural history he termed “locusts sucking the blood of Englishmen.” Not
a word or command would he understand except in his mother tongue; and no
blows nor reproofs had sufficed to tame his sturdy obstinacy. The other
pages had teased, fagged, and bullied him to their hearts’ content,
without disturbing his determination to go his own way; and his only
friend and protector had been Richard, whom, under the name of Fowen, he
took for a genuine Englishman, and loved with all his heart. If anything
would ever cure him of his wilful awkwardness and dogged bashfulness, it
was likely to be the kindness of Richard—above all, in the absence of the
tormentors, for Hamlyn de Valence alone of the other pages had been
selected to attend upon the Prince in this expedition; and he, though
scornful and peremptory, did not think the boy worthy of his attention,
and did not actively tease him.
At present Hamlyn de Valence, as well as most others of the passengers,
lay prostrate; scarcely alive even to the assurance of Richard, who had
still kept his feet, that the outline of the hills was quickly becoming
distinct, and that they were fast entering the gulf where lay the fleet
that had brought the crusaders of France and Sicily, whom they hoped to
join in the conquest and conversion of Tunis. On arriving at Aigues
Mortes, they had found that the French King had already sailed for
Sicily; and following him thither, learnt that his brother, Charles of
Anjou, had persuaded him to begin his crusade by a descent on Tunis, to
which the Sicilian crown was said to have some claim; that he had sailed
thither at once, and Charles had followed him so soon as the Genoese
transports could return for the Sicilian troops.
“I see the masts!” exclaimed Richard; “the bay is crowded with them!
There must be a goodly force. Yonder are two headlands; within them we
shall have smoother water—see—”
“What strikes thee so suddenly silent?” growled one of the muffled
figures stretched on deck.
“The ensigns are but half-mast high, my Lord,” returned Richard in an
awe-struck voice; “the lilies of France are hung drooping downward.”
“These plaguy southern winds at their tricks,” muttered at first Earl
Gilbert of Gloucester, for he it was who had spoken, though Richard had
not known him to be so near; then sitting up, he came to a fuller view:
“Hm—it looks ill! Thou canst keep thy feet, Fowen, or what do they call
thee? Down with thee to the cabin, and let the Prince know.”
Stepping across the prostrate forms, and meeting with vituperations as he
trode, Richard made his way to the ladder that led below, and notified
his presence behind the curtain that veiled the royal cabin. He was
summoned to enter at once. The Prince was endeavouring to write at a
swinging-table, the Princess lay white and resigned on a couch, attended
on by Dame Idonea (or more properly Iduna) Osbright, a lady who had lost
her husband in a former Crusade, and had ever since been a sort of
high-born head nurse in the palace. A Danish skald, who had once been at
the English court, had said that she seemed to have eaten her namesake’s
apple of immortality, without her apple of beauty, for no one could ever
remember to have seen her other than a tiny dried-up old witch, with keen
gray eyes, a sharp tongue, an ever ready foot and hand, and a frame
utterly unaffected by any of the influences so sinister to far younger
and stronger ones. Devoted to all the royal family, her special passion
was for Prince Edmund, who, in his mother’s repugnance to his deformity,
had been left almost entirely to her, and she had accompanied the
Princess Eleanor all the more willingly from her desire to look after her
favourite nursling.
“There, Lady,” said Edward to his wife, “the tossing is all but over;
here is Richard come to tell us that we are nigh on land.”
“Even so, my Lord,” returned Richard; “we are entering the gulf, but my
Lord of Gloucester has sent me to report to you that in all the ships the
colours are trailing.”
“Sayst thou?” exclaimed the Prince, hastily laying aside his writing
materials. “Fear not, _mi Dona_, I will return anon and tell thee how it
is. We are in smoother water already.”
“So much smoother that I will come with thee out of this stifling cabin,”
said Eleanor. “O would that we had been in time for thee to have
counselled thine uncles—”
“We will see what we have to grieve for ere we bemoan ourselves,” said
the Prince. “My good uncle of France would put his whole fleet in
mourning for one barefooted friar!”
“Depend on it, my Lord, ’tis mourning for something in earnest,”
interposed Dame Iduna; “I said it was not for nothing that a single pyot
came and rocked up his ill-omened tail while we were taking horse for
this expedition, and my Lady there was kissing the little ones at home,
nor that a hare ran over our road at Bagshot—”
“Well, Dame,” interposed the Prince good-humouredly, seeing his wife
somewhat affected by the list of omens, “I know you have a horse-shoe in
your luggage, so you will come safe off, whoever does not!”
“And what matters what my luck is,” returned the Dame, “an old beldame
such as me, so long as you and your brother come off safe, and find the
blessed princes at home well and sound? Would that we were out of this
sandy hole, or that any one would resolve me why we cannot go straight to
Jerusalem when we are about it!”
The Dame had delayed them while she spoke, in order to adjust the
Princess’s muffler over her somewhat dishevelled locks; but Eleanor
seeing that her husband was impatient, put a speedy end to her
operations, and took his arm.
Meantime the vessel had come within the Gulf of Goletta, and others of
the passengers had revived, and were standing on deck to watch their
entrance into the very harbour that two thousand years before had
sheltered the storm-tossed fleet of Æneas; but if the Trojan had there
found a wooded haven, the groves and sylvan shades must long since have
been destroyed, for to the new-comers the bay appeared inclosed by spits
of sand, though there was a rising ground in front that cut off the view.
In the centre of the bay was a low sandy islet, covered with remains of
masonry, and with a fort in the midst. On this was mounted the French
banner, but likewise drooping; and all around it lay the ships with
furled sails and trailing ensigns, giving them an inexpressibly
mysterious look of woe, like living creatures with folded wings and
vailed crests, lying on the face of the waters in a silent sleep of
sorrow. There was an awe of suspense that kept each one on the deck
silent, unable to utter the conjecture that weighed upon his breast.
A boat was already putting off, and its quick movements seemed to mar the
solemn stillness, as, impelled by the regular strokes of a dozen dark
handsome Genoese mariners with gaily-tinted caps, it shot towards the
vessel. A Genoese captain in graver garb sat at the helm, and as they
came alongside, a whisper, almost a shudder, seemed to thrill upwards
from the boat to the crew, and through them to the passengers, “_Il Rè_!”
“_il Rè santo_,” “_il Rè di Francia_.” It seemed to have pervaded the
whole ship even before the Genoese had had time to take the rope flung to
him and to climb up the ship’s side, where as his fellow-captain greeted
him, he asked hastily for the _Principe Inglese_.
For Edward had not come forward, but was standing with his back against
the mainmast, with colourless cheek and eyes set and fixed. Eleanor
looked up to him in silence, aware that he was mastering vehement
agitation, and would endure no token of sympathy or sorrow that would
unnerve him when dignity required firmness. To him, Louis IX., the
husband of his mother’s sister, had been the guiding friend and noble
pattern denied to him in his father; and Eleanor, intrusted to his
uncle’s care during the troubles of England, a maiden wife in her first
years of womanhood, had been formed and moulded by that holy and upright
influence. To both the loss was as that of a father; and the murmur
among the sailors was to them as a voice saying, “Knowest thou that God
will take away thy master from thy head to-day?” For the moment,
however, the Princess’s sole thought was how her husband would bear it,
and she watched anxiously till the struggle was over, in the space of a
few seconds, and he met the Genoese with his usual reserved courtesy; and
returning his salutation, signed to him to communicate his tidings.
They were however brief, for the captain had held by his ship, and all he
knew was that deadly sickness, fever, and plague had raged in the camp.
The Papal Legate was dead, and the good King of France. His son was dead
too, and many another beside.
“Which son?”
“Not the eldest—he lay sick, but there were hopes of him; but the little
one—he had been carried on board his ship, but it had not saved him.”
“Poor little Tristan!” sighed Eleanor; “true Cross-bearer, born in one
hapless Crusade to die in another.”
“The King of Sicily?” demanded Edward between his teeth.
“He had arrived the very day of his brother’s death,” said the Genoese;
“and when he had seen how matters stood, he had concluded a truce with
the King of Tunis, and intended to sail as soon as the new King of France
could bear to be moved.”
In the meantime the vessel had been anchored, and preparations were made
for landing; but the Princes impatience to hear details would not brook
even the delay of waiting till his horse could be set ashore. He
committed to the Earl of Gloucester the charge of encamping his men on
the island, left a message with him for his brother Edmund, who was in
another ship, and perceiving that Richard had suffered the least of all
his suite, summoned him to attend him in the boat which was at once
lowered.
This would have been a welcome call had not Richard found that poor
little John de Mohun had not revived like the other passengers, but still
lay inert and sometimes moaning. All Richard could do was to beg the
groom specially attached to the pages’ service, to have a care of the
little fellow, and get him sheltered in a tent as soon as possible; but
the Prince never suffered any hesitation in obeying him, and it was
needful to hurry at once into the boat.
Without a word, the Prince with long swift strides, in the light of the
sinking sun, walked up the low hill, the same where erst the pious Æneas
climbed with his faithful Achates following. From the brow the Trojan
prince had beheld the rising city in the valley—the English prince came
on its desolation. Yet nature had made the vale lovely—green with
well-watered verdure, fields of beauteous green maize, graceful date
palms, and majestic cork trees; and among them were white flat-roofed
Moorish houses; but many a black stain on the fair landscape told of the
fresh havoc of an invading army.
Utterly blotted out was Carthage. Half demolished, half choked with
sand, the city of Dido, the city of Hannibal, the city of Cyprian—all had
vanished alike, and nothing remained erect but a Moorish fortress, built
up with fragments of the huge stones of the old Phoenicians, intermixed
with the friezes and sculptures of Græcising Rome, and the whole fabric
in the graceful Saracenic taste; while completing the strange mixture of
periods, another of those mournful French banners drooped from the
battlements, and around it spread the white tents of the armies of France
and the Two Sicilies, like it with trailing banners; an orphaned
plague-stricken host in a ruined city.
While the Prince paused for a moment’s glance, a party of knights came
spurring up the hill, who had been ordered off to meet him on the first
intelligence that his fleet was in sight, but had been taken by surprise
by his alertness.
They met with bowed heads and dejected mien; and there was one who hid
his face and wept aloud as he exclaimed, “Ah! Messire, our holy King
loved you well!”
“Alas, beau sire Guillaume de Porçeles!” was all that Edward could say,
as with tears in his eyes he held out his hand to the good Provençal
knight, adding, “Let me hear!”
The knight, leading his horse and walking by Edward’s side, told how the
King had been induced to make his descent on Tunis, from some wild hope
of the king’s conversion, which had been magnified by Charles of Anjou,
from his dislike to let so gallant an army pass by without endeavouring
to obtain some personal advantage to his own realm of Sicily. Though a
vassal of Beatrix of Provence, the Sire de Porçeles was no devoted
admirer of her husband, Charles of Anjou, and spoke with no concealment
of the unhappy perversion of the Crusade. Charles of Anjou was
all-powerful with the court of Rome, and in crusading matters Louis
deemed it right absolutely to surrender to the ecclesiastical power all
that judgment which had made him so prudent and wise a king at home,
while his crusades were lamentable failures. Thus in him it had been a
piece of obedient self-denial not to press forward to the Holy Sepulchre;
but to land in this malarious bay to fulfil aims that, had he but used
his common sense, he would have seen to be merely those of private
ambition. There it had been one scene of wasting sickness. A few deeds
of arms had been done to refresh the spirits of the French, such as the
taking of the fort of Carthage, and now and then a skirmish of some
foraging party; but in general the Moors launched their spears and fled
without staying for combat. Many who had hid themselves in the vaults
and cellars of Carthage had been dragged out and put to death, and their
bodies had aided in breeding pestilence. Name after name fell from the
lips of the knight, like the roll of warriors fallen in a great battle,
when
“They melted from the field like snow,
Their king, their lords, their mightiest low.”
And the last foreign embassy that ever reached Louis IX. had been that of
the Greek Emperor Michael Palæologos, come to set before him the savage
barbarities perpetrated upon Christians by this brother—
“Who had spoilt the purpose of his life.”
It was as Charles entered the port, that Louis, lying on a bed of ashes,
with his hands crossed upon his breast, and the words, “O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem!” entered not the Jerusalem of his earthly schemes, but the
Jerusalem of his true aspirations.
“Shall we conduct you to my Lord the King of Sicily?” asked De Porçeles.
“No!” said Edward, with bitter sternness; “to my uncle of France.”
“Down, down, my Lord, and all of you instantly,” shouted Porçeles
suddenly, throwing himself face downwards on the ground. Edward was too
good a soldier not to follow the injunction instantaneously, and Richard
did the same, as well as all the knights who had come up with Porçeles.
Even the horses buried their noses in the hot sandy soil. A strange
rushing roaring sound passed over them; there was a sense of intense
suffocation, then of heat, pricking, and irritation. The Provençals were
rising; and the Prince and his page doing the same, shook off a plentiful
load of sand, and beheld, careering furiously away, between them and the
western sun, what looked like a purple column, reaching from earth to
heaven, and bespangled with living gold-dust, whirling round in giddy
spirals, and all the time fleeting so fast that it was diminishing every
moment, and was gone in a wink of the eye.
“Is it enchantment?” gasped Richard to the squire nearest him, as he
strove to clear his eyes from the sand and gaze after the wonder.
“Worse than enchantment,” quoth the squire; “it is a sand whirlwind.”
They were soon crossing the ditch that had been dug around the camp among
the ruins, and passed through lanes of tents erected among the thick
foliage that mantled the broken walls; here and there tracks of mosaic
pavement; of temples to Dido or Anna peeping forth beneath either the
luxuriant vegetation or the heavy sand-drifts; or columns of the new
Carthage lying veiled by acanthus; or remnants of churches destroyed by
Genseric—all alike disregarded by the sickly drooping figures that moved
feebly about among them, regarding them as little save stumbling-blocks.
A Moorish house in the midst of a once well-laid-out garden, now trampled
and destroyed, was the place to which the Provençal knight led the
English Prince. Entering the doorway of a court, where a fountain
sparkled in the midst of a marble pavement, they saw the richly-latticed
stone doorway of the house guarded by two figures in armour like iron
statues; and passing between them, they came into the principal chamber,
marble-floored, and with a divan of cushions round it; but full in the
midst of the room lay a coffin, covered with the lilied banner, and the
standard of the Cross; the crowned helmet, good sword, knightly spurs,
and cross-marked shield lying upon it; solemn forms in armour guarded it,
and priests knelt and chanted prayers and psalms around it. Within were
only the bones of Louis, which were to be taken to St. Denis. The flesh,
which had been removed by being boiled in wine and spices, was already on
its way to Palermo in a vessel whose melancholy ensigns would have
announced the loss to the English had they not passed it in the night.
Long did Edward kneel beside the remains of his uncle, with his face
hidden and thoughts beyond our power to trace. Richard’s heart was full
of that strange question “Wherefore?” Wherefore should the best and
purest schemes planned by the highest souls fall over like a crested wave
and become lost? So it had been, he would have said, with the Round
Table under Arthur, so with England’s rights beneath his own noble
father, so with the Crusade under such leaders as Edward of England and
Louis of France. Did he mark the answer in those Psalms that the priests
were singing around—
“Qui seminant in lacrymis, in exultatione metent,
Euntes ibant et flebant mittentes semina sua,
Venientes autem venient cum exultatione portantes manipulos suos.”
{100}
Surely we may believe that Simon of Leicester and Louis of France were
alike beyond grief at their marred visions, their errors of deed or of
judgment were washed away, and their true purpose was accepted, both
waiting the harvest when their works should follow them, and it should
have been made manifest that the effect of what they had been and had
suffered had told far more on future generations than what they had
wrought out in their own lifetime.
It was at that moment that the sensation that an eye was upon him caused
Richard to raise his eyes from the floor. One of the armed figures, who
had hitherto stood as still as suits of armour in a castle hall, had
partially lowered the visor of the helmet, and eyes, nose, and a part of
the cheeks were visible. Richard looked up, and they were those of his
father! was it a delusion of his fancy? He closed his eyes and looked
again. Again it was the deep brown Montfort eye, the clearly-cut nose,
the embrowned skin! He glanced at the bearings on the shield. Behold,
it was his own—the red field and white lion rampant with a forked tail,
which he had not seen for so long.
Almost at the same moment another person entered the chamber—a man with a
sallow complexion, narrow French features, sharp gray eyes, and a certain
royal bearing that even a cunning shrewdness of expression could not
destroy. His face was composed to a look of melancholy, and he crossed
himself and knelt down near Edward to await the conclusion of his
devotions. Edward, who knelt absorbed in grief, with his cloak partly
over his face, apparently did not perceive him, and after two or three
unheeded endeavours at attracting notice, he at length rose and said in a
low voice, “My fair nephew.” For a moment the Prince lifted up his face,
and Richard had rather have died than have encountered that glance of
mournful reproof; then hiding his face in his hands again, he continued
his devotions.
When these were ended he rose from his knees; and when out of the
death-chamber bowed his bead and with grave courtesy exchanged greetings
with Charles of Anjou, asking at the same time to see his young cousin
Philippe, the new King of France.
An inquiry from an attendant elicited that Philippe had just dropped
asleep under the influence of a potion from his leech.
“Then, fair nephew,” said Charles of Sicily, “be content with your old
uncle, and come to my apartments, where I will set before you the
necessities that have led me to conclude the truce that is baffling your
eager desire of deeds of arms.”
“Pardon me, royal uncle,” returned Edward, “I must see my camp set up.
It is already late, and I must take order that my troops mingle not where
contagion might seize them. Another time,” he added, “I may brook the
argument better.”
Charles of Anjou did not press him further. There was that in his face
and voice which betokened that his fierce indignation and overpowering
grief were scarcely restrained, and that a word of excuse in his present
mood would but have roused the lion.
Horses had been provided for him and his attendant. He flung himself on
his steed at once, and Richard was obliged to follow without a moment’s
opportunity of making inquiry about the wonderful apparition he had seen
in the chamber of death.
For some distance Edward galloped rapidly over the sandy soil, then
drawing up his horse when he had come to the brow from which he could see
on the one side the valley of Carthage, on the other the bay, he made an
exclamation which Richard took for a summons, and he came up asking if he
were called. “No, boy, no! I only spoke my thoughts aloud! Failure and
success! We’ve seen them both to-day—in the two kings! What thinkst
thou of them?”
“Better be wrecked than work the wreck, my Lord,” said Richard.
“Ay! but why surrender the wit to the worker of the wreck?” said Edward.
Then knitting his brow, “Two holy men have I known who did not blind
their wit for their conscience’ sake—two alone—did it fare better with
them? One was the good Bishop of Lincoln—the other thou knowst, Richard!
Well, one goes after another—first good Bishop Grostête, then the Lord of
Leicester, and now mine uncle of France; and if earth is to have no
better than such as it pleases the Saints to leave in it, it will not be
worth staying in much longer.”
“My Lord,” said Richard, coming near, “methought I saw my father’s face
under a visor—one of the knightly guards beside the holy King.”
“Well might thy fancy call him up in such a presence,” said Edward.
“They twain had hearts in the same place above, though they saw the world
below on different sides, and knew each other little, and loved each
other less, in life. That’s all at an end now! Well, back to our camp
to make the best of the world they have left behind them!” And then in a
tone that Richard was not meant to hear, “While _mi dona_ Leonor remains
to me there is something saintly and softening still in this world!
Heaven help me—ay, and all my foes—were she gone from it too!”
CHAPTER VIII
RICHARD’S WRAITH
“No distance breaks the tie of blood;
Brothers are brothers evermore;
Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood,
That magic may o’erpower.”—_Christian Year_.
IT was nearly dark when the Prince and the Page landed on the island, and
found the tents already set up in their due order and rank, according to
the discipline that no one durst transgress where Edward was the
commander.
Richard attended him to his pavilion, and being there dismissed until
supper-time, crossed the square space which was always left around the
royal banner, to the tent at the southern corner, which was regularly
appropriated to the pages’ use. On lifting its curtain he was, however,
dismayed to see a kirtle there, and imagining that he must have fallen
upon the ladies’ quarters, he was retreating with an apology; when the
sharp voice of Dame Idonea called out, “Oh yes, Master Page! ’tis you
that are at home here. I was merely tarrying till ’twas the will of one
of you to come in and look to the poor child.”
And little John of Dunster called from a couch of mantles, “Richard, oh!
is it he at last?”
“It is I,” said Richard, advancing into the light of a brass lamp, hung
by chains from the top of the tent. “This is kind indeed, Lady! But is
he indeed so ill at ease?”
“How should he be otherwise, with none of you idle-pated pages casting a
thought to him?”
“I was grieved to leave him—but the Prince summoned me,” began Richard.
“Beshrew thee! Tell me not of princes, as though there were no one whom
thou couldst bid to have a care of the little lad!”
“I did bid Piers—,” Richard made another attempt.
“Piers, quotha? Why didst not bid the Jackanapes that sits on the
luggage? A proper warder for a sick babe!”
“I am no babe!” here burst out John; “I am twelve years old come
Martinmas, and I need no tendance but Richard’s.”
“Ha, ha! So those are all the thanks we ladies get, when we are not
young and fair!” laughed Dame Idonea, rather amused.
“I want no women, young or old,” petulantly repeated John; “I want
Richard.—Lift me up, Richard; take away this cloak.”
“For his life, no!” returned the Dame; “he has the heats and the chills
on him, and to let him take cold would be mere slaughter.”
“Alas!” said Richard, “I hoped nothing ailed him but the sea, and that
landing would make all well.”
“As if the sea ever made a child shiver and burn by turns! Nay, ’tis the
trick of the sun in these parts. Strange that the sun himself should be
a mere ally of the Infidel! I tell thee, if the child is ever to see
Dunster again, thou must watch him well, keep him from the sun by day and
the chill by night; or he’ll be like the poor creatures in the French
camp out there, whom, I suppose, you found in fine case.”
“Alack yes, Lady!”
“I’ve seen it many a time; and all their disorders will be creeping into
our camp next. Tell me, is it even as they told us, one king dead and
the other dying?”
Richard began to wonder whether he should ever get her out of his tent,
for she insisted on his telling her every possible particular—who had
died, who had lived, who was sick, who well; and as from the close
connection between the English, French, and Sicilian courts, whose queens
were all sisters, she knew who every one was, and accounted for the
history of each person she inquired after, back to the last
generation—happy if it were not to the third—her conversation was not
quickly over. She ended at last, by desiring Richard to give her patient
some of a febrifuge, which she had brought with her, every two hours, and
when it was all spent, or in case of any change in the boy’s state, to
summon her from the ladies’ tent; adding, however, “But what’s the use of
leaving a pert springald like thee in charge? Thou wilt sleep like a
very dormouse, I’ll warrant! I’d best call Mother Jugge.”
“Oh no, no!” cried John; to whom the attendance of Mother Jugge would
have been a worse indignity than the being nursed by Dame Idonea; “let me
have no one but Richard! Richard knows all I want.—Richard, leave me not
again.”
“Ay, ay; a little lad ever hangs to a bigger, were he to torture the life
out of him. Small thanks for us women after our good looks be past. But
I’ll look in on the child in early morn, thanks or no thanks; for I know
his mother well, and if I can help it, the hyenas shall not make game of
his bones, as I hear them doing by the French yonder.”
John strove to say that, indeed, he thanked her, and had been infinitely
comforted and refreshed by her care, and that all he meant was to express
his distaste to Mother Jugge, the lavender (_i.e._ laundress), and his
desire for Richard Fowen’s company; but he was little attended to, and
apparently more than half offended, the brisk old lady trotted away.
That island was a dreary place; without a tree or any shelter from the
glare of sun and sea, whose combined influences threatened blindness,
sun-stroke, or at the very least blistered the faces of those who stepped
beyond their tents by day. The Prince’s orders, however, strictly
confined his army within its bounds, except that at twilight parties were
sent ashore for water and provisions, under strict orders, however, to
hold no parley with any one from the French or Sicilian camps, lest they
should bring home the infection of the pestilence; and always under the
command of some trustworthy knight, able and willing to enforce the
command.
The Prince himself refused all participation in the counsels of Charles
of Anjou, and confined himself, like his men, entirely to the fleet and
island. Charles contrived to spread a report, that his displeasure was
solely due to his disappointment at being balked of fighting with the
Tunisians; and that instead of indignant grief at the perversion of the
wrecked Crusade, he was only showing the sullenness of an aggrieved
swordsman. Even young Philippe le Hardi, a dull, heavy, ignorant youth,
was led to suppose this was the cause of his offence, and though daily
inquiries were sent through the Genoese crews for his health, he made no
demonstration of willingness to see his cousin of England.
Thus Richard had no opportunity of ascertaining whether there were any
basis for the strange impression he had received in St. Louis’s
death-chamber. It would have been an act of disobedience, not soon
overlooked by the Prince, had one of his immediate suite transgressed his
commands, and indeed, so strict was the discipline, that it would
scarcely have been possible to make the attempt. Besides, Richard’s time
was entirely engrossed between his duties in attending on the Prince, and
his care of little John of Dunster, who had a sharp attack of fever, and
was no doubt only carried through it by the experienced skill of Dame
Idonea Osbright, and by Richard’s tender nursing. Somehow the dame’s
heart was not won, even by the elder page’s dutiful care and obedience to
all her directions. Partly she viewed him as a rival in the affections
of the patient—who, poor little fellow, would in his companion’s absence
be the child he was, and let her treat him like his mother, or old nurse,
chattering to her freely about home, and his home-sick longings; whereas
the instant any male companion appeared, he made it a point of honour to
be the manly warrior and crusader, just succeeding so far as to be sullen
instead of plaintive; though when left to Richard, he could again relax
his dignity, and become natural and affectionate. But besides this
species of jealousy, Richard suspected that Lady Osbright knew, or at
least guessed, his own parentage, and disliked him for it accordingly.
She had never forgotten the distress and degradation of his mother’s
stolen marriage, nor forgiven his father for it; she had often stung the
proud heart of his brother Henry, when he shared the nursery of his
cousins the princes; and her sturdy English dislike of foreigners, and
her strong narrow personal loyalty, had alike resulted in the most
vehement hatred of the Earl of Leicester, whose head she would assuredly
have welcomed with barbarous exultation, worthy of her Danish ancestors.
Little chance, then, was there that she would regard with favour his son
under a feigned name, fostered in the Prince’s own court and camp.
She was a constraint, and almost a vexation, to Richard, and he heartily
wished that the boy’s recovery would free his tent from her. The boy did
recover favourably, in spite of all the discomforts of the island, and
was decidedly convalescent when, after nearly ten days’ isolation on the
island, Edward drew out his whole force upon the shore to do honour to
the embarkation of the relics of Louis IX. It was one of the most solemn
and melancholy pageants that could be conceived. A wide lane of mailed
soldiers was drawn up, Sicilians and Provençals on the one side, and on
the other, English and the Knights of the two Orders. All stood, or sat
on horseback in shining steel, guarding the way along which were carried
the coffins. In memory, perhaps, of Louis’s own words, “I, your leader,
am going first,” his remains headed the procession, closely followed by
those of his young son; and behind it marched his two brothers, Charles
and Alfonse, and his son-in-law, the King of Navarre (the two latter
already bearing the seeds of the fatal malady), and the three English
princes, Edward, Edmund, and Henry of Almayne, each followed by his
immediate suite. The long line of coffins of French counts and nobles,
whose lives had in like manner been sacrificed, brought up the rear; and
alas! how many nameless dead must have been left in the ruins!
Each coffin when brought to the shore was placed in a boat, and with
muffled oars transplanted to the vessel ready to receive it, while the
troops remained drawn up on the shore. The procession that ensued was
almost more mournful. It was still of biers, but these were not of the
dead but of the living, and again the foremost was the King of France,
while next to him came his sister, the Queen of Navarre. Edward went
down to his litter, as it was brought on the beach, and offered him his
arm as he feebly stepped forth to enter the boat. Philippe looked up to
his tall cousin, and wrung his hands as he murmured, “Alas! what is to be
the end of all this?” Edward made kind and cheerful reply, that things
would look better when they met at Trapani, and then almost lifted the
young king into his boat. Poor youth, he had not yet seen the end! He
was yet to lose his wife, his brother-in-law, and his uncle and aunt, ere
he should see his home again.
Richard and Hamlyn de Valence, as part of the Prince’s train, had moved
in the procession; and they were for the rest of the day in close
attendance on their lord, conveying his numerous orders for the
embarkation of the troops on the morrow, on their return to Sicily. It
was not till night-fall that Richard returned to his tent, where John of
Dunster was sitting on the sand at the door, eagerly watching for him.
“Well, Jack, my lad, how hast thou sped?” asked he, advancing. “Couldst
see our doleful array?”
“Is it thou, indeed, this time?” said the boy, catching at his cloak.
“Why, who should it be?”
“Thy wraith! Thy double-ganger has been here Richard.”
“What, dreaming again?”
“No no! I am well, I am strong. But this _is_ the land of enchantment!
Thou knowst it is. Did we not see a fleet of fairy boats sailing on the
sea? and a leaf eat up a fly here on this very tent pole? And did not
the Fay Morgaine show us towns and castles and churches in the sea? Thou
didst not call me light-headed then, Richard; thou sawest it too!”
“But this wraith of mine! Where didst see it?”
“In this tent. I was lying on the sand, trying if I could make it hold
enough to build a castle of it, when the curtain was put back, and there
thou stoodest, Richard!”
“Well, did I speak or vanish?”
“Oh, thou spakest—I mean the _thing_ spake, and it said, ‘Is this the
tent of the young Lord of Montfort?’ How now—what have I said?”
“Whom did he ask for?” demanded Richard breathlessly.
“Montfort—young Lord de Montfort!” replied John; “I know it was, for he
said it twice over.”
“And what didst thou answer?”
“What should I answer? I said we had no Montforts here; for they were
all dishonoured traitors, slain and outlawed.”
Richard could not restrain a sudden indignant exclamation that startled
the boy. “Every one says so! My father says so!” he returned, somewhat
defiantly.
“Not of the Earl,” said Richard, recollecting himself.
“He said every one of the young Montforts was a foul traitor, and
man-sworn tyrant, as bad as King John had been ere the Charter,” repeated
John hotly, “and their father was as bad, since he would give no redress.
Thou knowst how they served us in Somerset and Devon!”
“I have heard, I have heard,” said Richard, cutting short the story, and
controlling his own burning pain, glad that the darkness concealed his
face. “No more of that; but tell me, what said this stranger?”
“Thou thinkest it was really a stranger, and not thy wraith?” said John
anxiously. “I hope it was, for Dame Idonea said if it were a wraith, it
betokened that thou wouldst not—live long—and oh, Richard! I could not
spare thee!”
And the little fellow came nestling up to his friend’s breast in an
access of tenderness, such as perhaps he would have disdained save in the
darkness.
“Did Dame Idonea see him?” asked Richard.
“No; but she came in soon after he had vanished.”
“Vanished! What, like Fay Morgaine’s castles? Tell me in sooth, John;
it imports me to know. What did this stranger, when thou spakest thus of
the House of Montfort?”
“He answered,” said John; “he did not answer courteously—he said, that I
was a malapert little ass, and demanded again where this young Montfort’s
tent was. So then I said, that if a Montfort dared to show his traitor’s
face in this camp, the Prince would hang him as high as Judas; for I
wanted to be rid of him, Richard! it was so dreadful to see thy face, and
hear thy voice talking French, and asking for dead traitors.”
“French!” said Richard. “Methought thou knewst no French!”
“I—I have heard it long now, more’s the pity,” faltered John, “and—and
I’d have spoken anything to be rid of that shape.”
“And wert thou rid? What befell then?”
“It cursed the Prince, and King, and all of them,” said John with a
shudder; “it looked black and deadly, and I crossed myself, and said the
Blessed Name, and no doubt it writhed itself and went off in brimstone
and smoke, for I shut my eyes, and when I looked up again it was gone!”
“Gone! Didst look after him?”
“Oh, no! Earthly things are all food for a brave man’s sword,” said
Master John, drawing himself up very valiantly, “but wraiths and things
from beneath—they do scare the very heart out of a man. And I lay, I
don’t know how, till Dame Idonea came in; and she said either the foul
fiend had put on thy shape because he boded thee ill, or it was one of
the traitor brood looking for his like.”
“Tell me, John,” said Richard anxiously; “surely he was not in all points
like me. Had he our English white cross?”
“I cannot say as to the cross,” said John; “meseemed it was all
you—yourself—and that was all—only I thought your voice was strange and
hollow—and—now I think of it—yes—he was bearded—brown bearded. And,”
with a sudden thought, “stand up, prithee, in the opening of the tent;”
and then taking his post where he had been sitting at the time of the
apparition, “He was not so tall as thou art. Thy head comes above the
fold of the curtain, and his, I know, did not touch it, for I saw the
light over it. Then thou dost not think it was thy wraith?” he added
anxiously.
“I think my wraith would have measured me more exactly both in stature
and in age,” said Richard lightly. “But how did Leonillo comport
himself? He brooks not a stranger in general; and dogs cannot endure the
presence of a spirit.”
“Ah! but he fawned upon this one, and thrust his nose into his hand,”
said John, “and I think he must have run after him; for it was so long
ere he came back to me, that I had feared greatly he was gone, and oh,
Richard! then I must have gone too! I could never have met you without
Leonillo.”
By this time Richard had little doubt that the visitor must have been one
of his brothers, Simon or Guy, who were not unlikely to be among the
Provençals, in the army of Charles of Anjou. He had not been thought to
resemble them as a boy, but he had observed how much more alike brothers
appear to strangers than they do to their own family; and he knew by
occasional observations from the Prince, as well as from his brother
Henry’s recognition of his voice, that the old Montfort characteristics
must be strong in himself. He would not, however, avow his belief to
John of Dunster. Secrecy on his own birth had been enjoined on him by
his uncle the King; and disobedience to the old man’s most trifling
commands was always sharply resented by the Prince; nor was the boy’s
view of the House of Montfort very favourable to such a declaration.
Richard really loved the brave little fellow, and trusted that some day
when the discovery must be made, it would be coupled with some exploit
that would show it was no name to be ashamed of. So he only told the boy
that he had no doubt the stranger was a foreign knight, who had once
known the old Leicester family; but bade him mention the circumstance to
no one. He feared, however, that the caution came too late, since Dame
Idonea was not only an inveterate gossip, but was likely to hold in
direful suspicion any one who had been inquired for by such a name.
The personal disappointment of having missed his brother was great.
Richard was very lonely. The Princes, and Hamlyn de Valence, were the
only persons who knew his secret, and both by Prince Edmund and De
Valence he was treated with indifference or dislike. Edward himself,
though the object of his fervent affection, and his protector in all
essentials, was of a reserved nature, and kept all his attendants at a
great distance. On very rare occasions, when his feelings had been
strongly stirred—as in the instance of his visit to his uncle’s
death-chamber—he might sometimes unbend; and momentary flashes from the
glow of his warm deep heart went further in securing the love and
devotion of those around him, than would the daily affability of a lower
nature; but in ordinary life, towards all concerned with him except his
nearest relations, he was a strict, cold, grave disciplinarian, ever
just, though on the side of severity, and stern towards the slightest
neglect or breach of observance, nor did he make any exception in favour
of Richard. If the youth seldom received one of his brief annihilating
reproofs, it was because they were scarcely ever merited; but he had
experienced that any want of exactitude in his duties was quite as
severely visited as if he had not been the Prince’s close kinsman,
romantically rescued by him, and placed near his person by his special
desire. And Eleanor, with all her gentle courtesy and kindness, was
strictly withheld by her husband from pampering or cockering his pages;
nor did she ever transgress his will.
The atmosphere was perhaps bracing, but it was bleak: and there were
times when Richard regretted his acceptance of the Prince’s offer, and
yearned after family ties, equality, and freedom. Simon and Guy had
never been kind to him, but at least they were his brothers, and with
them disguise and constraint would be over—he should, too, be in
communication with his mother and sister. He was strongly inclined to
cast in his lot with them, and end this life of secrecy, and distrust
from all around him save one, and his loyal love ill requited even by
that one. It grieved him keenly that one of his brothers should have
been repulsed from his tent; an absolutely famished longing for fraternal
intercourse gained possession of him, and as he lay on his pallet that
night in the dark, he even shed tears at the thought of the greeting and
embrace that he had missed.
Still he had hopes for the future. There must be meetings and
possibilities of inquiries passing between the three armies, and he would
let no opportunity go by. The next day, however, there was no chance.
The English troops were embarked in their vessels, and after a short and
prosperous passage were again landed at Trapani, the western angle of
Sicily. The French had sailed first, but were not in harbour when the
English came in; and the Sicilians, who had brought up the rear, arrived
the next day, but still there was no tidings of the French. Towards the
evening, however, the royal vessel bearing Philippe III. came into
harbour, and all the rest were in sight, when at sunset a frightful storm
arose, and the ships were in fearful case. Many foundered, many were
wrecked on the rocky islets around the port, and the French army was
almost as much reduced in numbers as it had been by the Plague of
Carthage.
Charles of Anjou remained himself in the town of Trapani, but knowing the
evils of crowding a small space with troops, he at once sent his men
inland, and Richard was again disappointed of the hope of seeing or
hearing of his brothers; for the Prince still forbade all intercourse
with the shattered remnant of the French army, justly dreading that they
might still carry about them the seeds of the infection of the camp.
The three heads of the Crusade, however, met in the Castle of Trapani to
hold council on their future proceedings. The place was the
state-chamber of the castle.
Each prince had brought with him a single attendant, and the three stood
in waiting near the door, in full view of their lords, though out of
earshot. It was an opportunity that Richard could not bear to miss of
asking for his brothers, unheard by any of those English ears who would
be suspicious about his solicitude for the House of Montfort. A
lively-looking Neapolitan lad was the attendant of King Charles; and in
spite of all the perils of attempting conversation while thus waiting,
Richard had—while the princes were greeting one another, and taking their
seats—ventured the question, whether any of the sons of the English Earl
of Leicester were in the Sicilian army. Of Earl of Leicester the Italian
knew nothing; but Count of Montfort was a more familiar sound. “Si, si,
vero!” Sicily had rung with it; and Count Rosso Aldobrandini, of the
Maremma Toscana, had given his only daughter and heiress to the banished
English knight, Guido di Monforte, who had served in the king’s army as a
Provençal.
Richard’s heart beat high. Guy a well-endowed count, with a castle,
lands, and home! He would have asked where Guy now was, and how far off
was the Maremma; but the conference between the princes was actually
commencing, and silence became necessary on the part of their attendants.
They could only hear the murmur of voices; but could discern plainly the
keen looks and animated gestures of Charles of Anjou, the sickly sullen
indifference of Philippe, and the majestic gravity of Edward, whose noble
head towered above the other two as if he were their natural judge.
Charles was, in fact, trying to persuade the others to sail with him for
Greece, and there turn their forces on the unfortunate Michael
Palæologos, who had lately recovered Constantinople, the Empire that
Charles hoped to win for himself, the favoured champion of Rome.
Philippe merely replied that he had had enough of crusading, he was sick
and weary, he must go home and bury his father, and get himself crowned.
Charles might be then seen trying a little hypocrisy; and telling
Philippe that his saintly father would only have wished to speed him on
the way of the Cross. Then that trumpet voice of Edward, whose tones
Richard never missed, answered, “What is the way of the Cross, fair
uncle?”
It was well known that Louis IX. had refused to crusade against
Christians, even Greek Christians, and Philippe soon sheltered himself
under the plea that had not at first occurred to his dull mind. In
effect, he laid particulars before his uncle, that quickly made it plain
that the French army was in too miserable a condition to do anything but
return home; and Charles then addressed his persuasions to
Edward—striving to convince him in the first place of the sanctity of a
war against Greek heretics, and when Edward proved past being persuaded
that arms meant for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre ought not to be
employed against Christians who reverenced it, he tried to demonstrate
the uselessness of hoping to conquer the Holy Land, even by such a
Crusade as had been at first planned, far less with the few attached to
Edward’s individual banner. Long did the king argue on. His low voice
was scarcely audible, even without the words; but Edward’s brief,
ringing, almost scornful, replies, never failed to reach Richard’s ear,
and the last of them was, “It skills not, my fair uncle. For the Holy
Land I am vowed to fight, and thither would I go had I none with me but
Fowen, my groom!”
And withal his eye lit on Richard, with a look of certainty of response;
of security that here was one to partake his genuine ardour, and of
refreshment in the midst of his disgust with the selfish uncle and
sluggish cousin. That look, that half smile, made the youth’s heart
bound once more. Yes, with him he would go to the ends of the earth!
What was the freedom of Guy’s castle, to the following of such a lord and
leader in such a cause?
Richard could have thrown himself at his feet, and poured forth pledges
of fidelity. But in ten minutes he was following home the
unapproachable, silent, cold warrior.
And the lack of any outlet for his aspirations turned them back upon
themselves, with a strange sense of bitterness and almost of resentment.
Leonillo alone, as the creature lay at his feet, and looked up into his
face with eyes of deep wistful meaning, seemed to him to have any feeling
for him; and Leonillo became the recipient of many an outpouring of
something between discontent and melancholy. Leonillo, the sole remnant
of his home! He burnt for that Holy Land where he was to win the name
and fame lacking to him; but there was to be long delay.
Fain would the Prince have proceeded at once to Palestine; but the
Genoese, from whom, in the abeyance of the English navy, he had been
obliged to hire his transports, absolutely refused to sail for the East
until after the three winter months; and he was therefore obliged to
remain in Sicily. King Charles invited him to spend Christmas at the
court at Syracuse or Naples, in hopes, perhaps, of persuading him to the
Greek expedition; but Edward was far too much displeased with the Angevin
to accept his hospitality; recollecting, perhaps, that such a sojourn had
been little beneficial to his great-uncle Cœur de Lion’s army. He
decided upon staying where he was, in the remotest corner of Sicily, and
keeping his three hundred crusaders as much to themselves and to strict
military discipline as possible, maintaining them at his own cost, and
avoiding as far as he could all transactions with the cruel and violent
Provençal adventurers, with whom Charles had filled the island.
Thus Richard found his hopes of obtaining further intelligence about his
brothers entirely passing away. He did, indeed, venture on one day
saying to the Prince, “My Lord, I hear that my brother Guy hath become a
Neapolitan count!”
“A Tuscan robber would be nearer the mark!” coldly replied Edward.
“And,” added Richard, “methought, while the host is in winter quarters, I
would venture on craving your license, my Lord, to visit him?”
“Thou hast thy choice, Richard,” answered the Prince, with grave
displeasure; “loyalty and honour with me, or lawlessness and violence
with thy brother. Both cannot be thine!”
And returning to his study of the Lais of Marie de France, he made it
evident that he would hear no more, and left Richard to a sharp struggle;
in which hot irritation and wounded feeling would have carried him away
at once from the stern superior who required the sacrifice of all his
family, and gave not a word of sympathy in return. It was the crusading
vow alone that detained the youth. He could not throw away his pledge to
the wars of the Cross, and it was plain that if he went now to seek out
Guy, he should never be allowed to return to the crusading army. But
that vow once fulfilled, proud Edward should see, that not merely
sufferance but friendliness was needed to bind the son of his father’s
sister to his service. The brother at Bednall Green was right, this
bondage was worse than beggary. Nor, under the influence of these
feelings, had Richard’s service the alacrity and affection for which it
had once been remarkable: the Prince rebuked his short-comings
unsparingly, and thus added to the sense of injury that had caused them;
Hamlyn de Valence sneered, and Dame Idonea took good care to point out
both the youth’s neglects and his sullenness, and to whisper
significantly that she did not wonder, considering the stock he came of.
A soothing word or gentle excuse from the kind-hearted Princess were the
only gleams of comfort that rendered the present state of things
endurable.
Just after Christmas arrived a vessel with reinforcements from home.
Among them came a small body of Hospitaliers, with the novice Raynal at
their head, now a full-blown knight, in dazzling scarlet and white, as
Sir Reginald Ferrers. Richard at once recognized him, when he came to
present himself to the Prince, and was very desirous of learning whether
he knew aught of that other brother, so mysteriously hidden in obscurity.
Sir Raynal on his side seemed to share the desire; he exchanged a
friendly glance with the page, and when the formality of the reception
was over sought him out, saying, “I have a greeting for you, Master
Fowen.”
“From Sir Robert Darcy?” asked Richard. “How fares it with the kind old
knight?”
“Excellent well! Nay, nothing fares amiss with Father Robert!” said the
young knight, smiling. “Everything is the very best that could have
befallen him—to hear him speak. He is the very sunshine of the Spital,
and had he been ordered on this Crusade, I think all the hamlets round
would have risen to withhold him.”
“Ah!” said Richard, hoping he was acting indifference; “said he aught of
the little maiden with the blind father?”
“Pretty Bessee and Blind Hal of Bednall Green? Verily, that was the
purport of my message. The poor knave hath been sorely sick and more
cracked than ever this autumn; insomuch that Father Robert spent whole
nights with him; and though he be better now, and as much in his senses
as e’er he will be, such another access is like to make an end of him.
Now, Father Robert saith that you, Sir Page, know who the poor man is by
birth, and that he prays you to send him word what had best be done with
the child, in case either of his death or of his getting so frenzied as
to be unable to take care of her.”
“Send him word!” repeated Richard in perplexity.
“We shall certainly have some one returning soon to the Spital,” replied
Sir Raynal. “Indeed, methinks some of the princes will be like to
return, for the old King of the Romans is failing fast, and King Henry
implored that the Prince of Almayne would come to hearten him.”
“Then must I write to Sir Robert?” said Richard; “mine is scarce a
message for word of mouth.”
“So he said it was like to be,” returned the knight, “and he took thought
to send you a slip of parchment, knowing, he said, that such things are
not wont to be found in a crusader’s budget. Moreover, if ink be
wanting, he bade me tell you that there’s a fish in these seas, with many
arms, and very like the foul fiend, that carries a bag of ink as good as
any scrivener’s.”
“I have seen the monster,” said Richard, who had often been down to the
beach to see the unlading of the fishermen’s boats, and to share little
John of Dunster’s unfailing marvel, that the Mediterranean should produce
such outlandish creatures, so alien to his Bristol Channel experiences.
And the very next time the boats came in, Richard made his way to the
shore, on the beautiful, rocky, broken coast; and presently encountered a
sepia, which fully justified Sir Robert’s comparison, lying at the bottom
of a boat. The fisherman intended it for his own dinner, when all his
choicer fish should have gone to supply the Friday’s meal of the English
chivalry; and he was a good deal amazed when the young gentleman, making
his Provençal as like Sicilian as he could, began to traffic with him for
it, and at last made him understand that it was only its ink-bag that he
wanted.
The said ink, secured in a shell, was brought home by Richard, together
with a couple of the largest sea-bird’s quills that he could find—and
which he shaped with his dagger, as best he might, in remembrance of
Father Adam de Marisco’s writing lessons. He meditated what should be
the language of his letter, which was not likely to be secure from the
eyes of the few who could read it; and finally decided that English was
the tongue known to the fewest readers, who, if they knew letters at all,
were sure to be acquainted with French and Latin.
On a strip of parchment, then, about nine inches long and three wide, he
proceeded to indite, in upright cramped letters, with many contractions,
nearly in such terms as these—
REVEREND AND KNIGHTLY FATHER,
The good ghostly father and knight, Sir Raynald Ferrers, hath borne
to me your tidings of my brother’s sickness, and of all your goodness
to him—whereof I pray that our blessed Lady and good St. John may
reward you, for I can only pray for you. Touching his poor little
daughter, in case of his death or frenzy, which the Saints of their
mercy forefend, I would entreat you of your goodness to place her in
some nunnery, but without making known her name and quality until my
return; so Heaven bring me home safe. But an if I should be slain in
this Eastern land, then were it most for the little one’s good to
present her to the gracious lady Princess, by whom she would be most
lovingly and naturally cared for; and would be more safe than with
such as might shun to own her rights of blood and heirship. Commend
me to my brother, if so be that he cares to hear of me; and tell him
that Guy hath wedded the lady of a castle in the land of Italy. And
so praying you, ghostly father, for your blessing, I greet you well,
and rest your grateful bedesman and servant,
RICHARD OF LEICESTER.
Given at the Prince’s camp at Drepanum, in the realm of Sicilia, on
the octave of the Epiphany, in the year of grace MCCLXX.; and so our
Lord have you heartily in His keeping.
Letter-writing was a mighty task; and Richard’s extemporary implements
were not of the best. He laboured hard over his composition, kneeling
against a chest in the tent. When at length he raised his head, he
encountered a face full of the most utter amazement. Little John of
Dunster had come into the tent, and stood gazing at him with open eyes
and gaping mouth, as if he were perpetrating an incantation. Richard
could not help laughing.
“Why, Jack, dost think I am framing a spell for thee?”
“Writing!” gasped John, relieving his distended mouth by at length
closing it.
“Wherefore not? Did not I see the chaplain teaching thee to write at
Guildford?”
“Ay—but that was when I was a babe! Writing! Why, my father never
writes!”
“But the Prince does. Thou hast seen him write. Come now,” added
Richard: “if thou wilt, I will help thee to write a letter to send thy
greetings home to Dunster. Thy father and mother will be right glad to
hear thou hast ’scaped that African fever.”
“They!—They’d think me no better than a French monk!” said John. “And
none of them could read it either! I’ll never write! My grandsire only
set his cross to the great charter!”
And John retreated—in fear perhaps that Richard would sully his manhood
with a writing lesson!
The letter was rolled up in a scroll, bound with a silken thread, and
committed to the charge of Sir Raynald Ferrers, who was going shortly to
be commandery of his Order at Castel San Giovanni, whence he had no doubt
of being able to send the letter safely to Sir Robert Darcy, at the Grand
Priory.
It would perhaps have been more expeditious to have intrusted the letter
to one of the suite of Prince Henry of Almayne, who had been recalled by
the tidings of the state of his father’s health; but Richard dreaded
betraying his brother’s secret too much to venture on confiding the
missive to any of this party—none of whom were indeed likely to wish to
oblige him. Hamlyn de Valence was going with Henry as his esquire; and
his absence seemed to Richard like the beginning of better days.
CHAPTER IX
ASH WEDNESDAY
“Mostrocci un ombra da l’ un canto sola
Dicendo ‘Colui feese in grembo a Dio
Lo cuor che’n su Tamigi ancor si cola.’”
DANTE. _Inferno_.
SHROVETIDE had come, and the Prince had, before leaving Trapani, been
taking some share in the entertainments of the Carnival. Personally, his
grave reserve made gaieties distasteful to him; and the disastrous
commencement of the Crusade weighed on his spirits. But when state and
show were necessary, he provided for them with royal bounty and
magnificence, and caused them to be regulated with the admirable taste of
that age of exceeding beauty in which he lived.
Thus, in this festal season, banquets were provided, and military shows
took place, for the benefit of the Sicilian nobility and of the citizens
of Trapani, on such a scale, that the English rose high in general
esteem; and many were the secret wishes that Edmund of Lancaster rather
than Charles of Anjou had been able to make good the grant from the Pope.
Splendid were the displays, and no slight toil did they involve on the
part of the immediate train of the Prince, few in number as they were,
and destitute of the appliances of the resident court. Richard hurrying
hither and thither, and waiting upon every one, had little of the
diversion of the affair; but he would willingly have taken treble the
care and toil in the relief it was to be free from the prying mistrustful
eyes of Hamlyn de Valence. Looking after little John of Dunster was,
however, no small part of his trouble; the urchin was so certain to get
into some mischief if left to himself—now treading on a lady’s train, now
upsetting a flagon of wine, now nearly impaling himself upon the point of
a whole spitful of ortolans that were being handed round to the company,
now becoming uncivilly deaf upon his French ear. Altogether, it was a
relief to Richard’s mind when he stumbled upon the little fellow fast
asleep, even though it was in the middle of the Princess’s violet velvet
and ermine mantle, which she had laid down in order to tread a stately
measure with Sire Guillaume de Porçeles.
After all Richard’s exertions that evening, it was no wonder that the
morning found him fast asleep at the unexampled hour of eight! His
wakening was a strange one. His little fellow-page was standing beside
him with a strange frightened yet important air.
“What is the matter, John? It is late? Is the Prince gone to Mass? Has
he missed me?” cried Richard, starting up in dismay, for unpunctuality
was a great offence with Edward.
“He is gone to Mass,” said John, “but, before he comes back,” he came
near and lowered his voice, “Hob Longbow sent me to say you had better
flee.”
“Flee! Boy, why should I flee? Are _your_ senses fleeing?”
“O Richard,” cried John, his face clearing up, “then it is not true! You
are not one of the traitor Montforts!”
“If I were a hundred Montforts, what has that to do with it?”
“Then all is well,” exclaimed the boy. “I said you were no such thing!
I’ll tell Hob he lied in his throat.”
“If he said I was a traitor, verily he did; but as to being a
Montfort—But, how now, John, what means all this?”
“Then it is so! O Richard, Richard, you cannot be one of them! You
cannot have written that letter to warn them to murder Prince Henry.”
“To murder Prince Henry!” Richard stood transfixed. “Not the Prince’s
little son!”
“Oh no, Prince Henry of Almayne! At Viterbo! Hamlyn de Valence saw it.
He is come back. It was in the Cathedral. O Richard—at the elevation of
the Host! Guy and Simon de Montfort fell on him, stabbed him to the
heart, and rushed out. Then they came back again, and dragged him by the
hair of his head into the mire, and shouted that so their father had been
dragged through the streets of Evesham. And then they went off to the
Maremma! And,” continued the boy breathlessly, “Hob Long-bow is on
guard, and he bade me tell you, that for love of your father he will let
you pass; and then you can hide; if only you can go ere the Prince comes
forth.”
“Hide! Wherefore should I hide? This is most horrible, but it is no
deed of mine!” said Richard. “Who dares to think it is?”
“Then you are none of them! You had no part in it! I shall tell Hob he
is a villain—”
“Stay,” said Richard, laying a detaining hand on the boy. “Why does Hob
think me in danger? Is anything stirring against me?”
“They all—all of poor Prince Henry’s meiné, that are come back with
Hamlyn—say that you are a Montfort too, and—oh! do not look so
fierce!—that you sent a letter to warn your brethren where to meet, and
fall on the Prince. And the murderers being fled, they are keen to have
your life; and, Richard, you know I saw you write the letter.”
“That you saw me write a letter, is as certain as that my name is
Montfort,” said Richard, “but I am not therefore leagued with traitors or
murderers! In the church, saidst thou? Oh, well that the Prince forbade
me to visit Guy!”
“Then you will not flee?”
“No, forsooth. I will stay and prove my innocence.”
“But you are a Montfort! And I saw you write the letter.”
“Did you speak of my having written the letter?” asked Richard, pausing.
The boy hung his head, and muttered something about Dame Idonea.
By this time, even if Richard had thought of flight, it would have been
impossible. Two archers made their presence apparent at the entrance of
the tent, and in brief gruff tones informed Richard that the Prince
required his presence. The space between his tent and the royal pavilion
was short, but in those few steps Richard had time to glance over the
dangers of his position, and take up his resolution though with a certain
stunned sense that nothing could be before the member of a proscribed
family, but failure, suspicion, and ruin.
The two brothers, Edward and Edmund, with the Earl of Gloucester, and
their other chief councillors, were assembled; and there were looks of
deep concern on the faces of all, making Edward’s more than ever like a
rigid marble statue; while Edmund had evidently been weeping bitterly,
though his features were full of fierce indignation. Hamlyn de Valence,
and a few other members of the murdered Prince’s suite, stood near in
deep mourning suits.
“Richard de Montfort,” said Prince Edward, looking at him with a
sorrowful reproachful sternness that went to his heart, “we have sent for
you to answer for yourself, on a grave charge. You have heard of that
which has befallen?”
“I have heard, my Lord, of a foul crime which my soul abhors. I trust
none present here think me capable of sharing in it! Whoever dares to
accuse me, shall be answered by my sword!” and he glanced fiercely at
Hamlyn.
“Hold!” said Edward severely, “no one is so senseless as to accuse you of
taking actual part in a crime that took place beyond the sea; but there
is only too much reason to believe that you have been tampered with by
your brothers.”
Then, as his brother Edmund made some suggestion to him, he added, “Is
John de Mohun of Dunster here?”
“Yea, my Lord,” said the little boy, coming forward, with a flush on his
face, and a bold though wistful look, “but verily Richard is no traitor,
be he who he may!”
“That is not what we wished to ask of you,” said the Prince, too sad and
earnest to be amused even for a moment. “Tell us whom you said, even
now, you had seen in the tent you shared with him in Africa.”
“I said I had seen his wraith,” said John.
No smile lighted upon the Prince’s features; they were as serious as
those of the boy, as he commented, “His likeness—his exact likeness—you
mean.”
“Ay,” said the boy; “but Richard proved to me after, that it had been
less tall, and was bearded likewise. So I hoped it did not bode him
ill.”
“Worse, I fear, than if it had in sooth been his double,” said Gloucester
to Prince Edmund. The Prince added the question whether this visitor had
spoken; and John related the inquiry for Richard by the name of Montfort,
and his own reply, which elicited a murmur of amused applause among the
bystanders.
The Prince, however, continued in the same grave manner to draw from the
little witn
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