The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade by Charlotte M. Yonge (ebook reader .TXT) 📖

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