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

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