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

And away went Edward, to be glanced at as he passed through the camp, as a severe, hard, cruel tyrant.  Had he only been gay, open-hearted, and careless, he might have hung both the guilty archers, and a dozen innocent ones into the bargain, and yet have never won the character for harshness and unmercifulness that he had acquired even while condoning many a dire offence, simply from his stern gravity, and his punctilious exactitude in matters of discipline.  But the evils of a lax and easy-going court had been so fatal, and had produced such suffering, that it was no marvel that he had adopted a rule of iron; and in the pain and distress of seeing his closest friends, the noblest subjects in the realm, pushed into a rebellion where he had himself to maintain his father’s cause, and then to watch, without being able to hinder, the mean-spirited revenge of his own partizans, his manner had acquired that silent reserve and coldness which made him feared and hated by the many, while intensely beloved by the few.  Even towards those few it was absolutely difficult to him to unbend, as he had done in this hour of effusion towards Richard; and the youth was proportionably moved and agitated with fervent gratitude and affection.

He had scarcely had so happy an evening since he had been a boy at Odiham.  He was indeed feeble and dizzy at times, but with a far from painful languor; and the Princess, enjoying the permission to follow the dictates of her own heart, was kind to him with a motherly or sisterly kindness, could not bear to receive from him his wonted attendance, but made him lie upon the cushions at her feet, and when out of hearing of every one, talked of the faithful Isabel, and of “pretty Bessee,” on whom she already looked as the companion of her little Eleanor, whom she had left at home.

It might be questioned whether Richard did not undergo more in watching little John de Mohun’s endeavours at waiting than he would have suffered from doing it himself.  And not a few dissatisfied glances were levelled at the favoured stripling, besides the literally as well as figuratively sour glances of Dame Idonea.

Edward, being of course unable to betray his real grounds for acquitting Richard, had only deigned to inform Prince Edmund that he knew all, and was perfectly satisfied.  Now Prince Edmund, as well as all the old court faction, deemed Edward’s regard for the Barons’ party an unreasonable weakness that they durst not indeed combat openly, but which angered them as a species of disaffection to his own cause.  The outer world thought him a tyrant, but there was an inner world to whom he appeared weakly good-natured and generous; and this inner world thought Richard had successfully hoodwinked him!

Therefore Edmund of Lancaster desired to adopt Hamlyn de Valence as his own squire, to save him from association with Richard; and both prince and squire, and all the rest of the train, made it perfectly evident to the young Montfort that he was barely tolerated out of respect for the Prince.

But Richard in his joy could have borne worse than this, for the Prince had not relaxed in his kindness, and made his young cousin’s wound an excuse for showing him more tenderness and consideration than he would otherwise have thought befitting.  Moreover, an esquire, as Richard had now become, might be in much closer relations of intimacy with his master than was possible to a page; and the day that had begun so sadly was like the dawn of a brighter period.

Sir Raynald Ferrers had been invited to the Prince’s pavilion, but the rules of his Order did not permit his joining a secular entertainment in Lent, and he did not admit either the camp life or the gravity of the Prince’s mourning household as a dispensation.  However, when Richard, leaning fondly on little John’s ready shoulder, crossed to his own tent, he found his good friend waiting there to attend to his wound, which Sir Raynald professed to regard as an excellent subject to practise upon, and likewise to hear whether all had been cleared up, and had gone right with him.

“Though,” he said, “I could not doubt of it when that fair and lovely Princess had taken your matters in hand.  Tell me, Richard, have you secular men many such dames as that abroad in the world?”

“Not many such as she,” said Richard, smiling.

“Well, I have not spoken to a female thing, save perhaps pretty Bessee, since I went into the Spital, ten years ago; and verily the sound of the lady’s voice was to me as if St. Margaret had begun talking to me!  And so wise and clear of wit too.  I thought women were feather-pated wilful beings, from whom there was no choice but to shut oneself up!  I trow, that now all is well with thee, thou wilt scarce turn a thought again towards our brotherhood, where to glance at such a being becomes a sin.”  And Raynald crossed himself, with an effort to recall his wonted asceticism.

“Ladies’ love is not like to be mine,” said Richard, laughing, as one not yet awake to the force of the motive.  “No!  Gladly would I be one of your noble brotherhood, where alone have I met with kindness—but, Sir Raynald, my first duty under Heaven must be to redeem my father’s name, by my service to the Prince.  My brothers think they uphold it by deadly revenge.  I want to show what a true Montfort can be with such a master as my father never had!  And, Raynald, I cannot but fear that further schemes of vengeance may be afloat.  The Prince is too fearless to take heed to himself, and who is so bound to watch for him as I?”

“On her who knew that love can conquer death;
   Who, kneeling with one arm about her king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,
      Sweet as new buds in spring.”—Tennyson.

A year had elapsed since the crusaders had landed in Palestine; Nazareth had been taken, and the Christian host were encamped upon the plain before Acre, according to their Prince’s constant habit of preferring to keep his troops in the open field, rather than to expose them to the temptations of the city—which was, alas! in a state most unworthy of the last stronghold of Latin Christianity in the Holy Land.

It was on a scorching June day, Whitsun Tuesday, in the exquisite beauty of an early summer in the mountains of the Levant—when “the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell,”—that Richard de Montfort was descending the wooded sides of Mount Carmel.

Anxious tidings had of late come from England respecting the health of the little Prince John; and Princess Eleanor was desirous of offering gifts and obtaining prayers on his behalf, on the part of the good Fathers of the convent associated with the memory of the great Prophet who had raised the dead child to life.  She herself, however, was at the time unfit for a mountain ride; and Prince Edward, who was a lay brother of the Carmelite order, and had fully intended himself to go and offer his devotions for his child, was so unwell on that day, from the feverish heat of the summer, that he could not expose himself to the sun; and Richard was therefore despatched on the part of the royal pair.  He had ascended in the cool of the morning, setting forth before sunrise, and attending the regular Mass.  The good Fathers would fain have detained him till the heat of the day should be past; but his anxiety not to overpass in the slightest degree the time fixed by the Prince, made him resolved on setting out so soon as his errand was sped.

Unspeakably beautiful was his ride—through rocky dells filled with copsewood, among which jessamine, lilies, and exquisite flowers were peeping up, and the coney, the fawn, and other animals, made Leonillo prick his ears and wistfully seek from his master’s eye permission to dash off in pursuit.  Or the “oaks of Carmel,” with many a dark-leaved evergreen, towered in impenetrable thicket, and at an opening glade might be beheld on the north-east, “that goodly mountain Lebanon” rising in a thick clothing of wood; and beyond, in sharp cool softness, the white cone of rain-distilling Hermon.  Far to the west lay the glorious glittering sheet of the Mediterranean; but nearer, almost beneath his feet, was the curving bay and harbour of Ptolemais, filled with white sails, the white city of Acre full of fortresses and towers; while on the plain beside it, green with verdure as Richard’s own home greenwood of Odiham, lay the white tents of the Christian army, in so clear an atmosphere that he could see the flash of the weapons of the men on guard, and almost distinguish the blazonry of the banners.

Richard dismounted to gather some roses and jessamine for the Princess, and to collect some of the curious fossil echini, which he believed to be olives turned to stone by the Prophet Elijah, as a punishment to a churlish peasant who refused him a meal.  He thought that such treasures would be a welcome addition to the store he was accumulating for the good old Grand Prior.  He gave his horse to Hob Longbow, his only attendant except a young Sicilian lad.  This same Longbow had stuck to him with a pertinacity that he could not shake off, and in truth had hitherto justified the Prince’s prediction that he would be a brave and faithful fellow when his allegiance was no further disturbed by the proximity of the outlawed Montforts.  There had been nothing to lead Richard to think he ought to indicate either him or Nick Dustifoot to the Prince as the persons who had been connected with Guy in Italy.

Presently Leonillo bounded forward, and Richard became aware of the figure of a man in light armour standing partly hidden among the brushwood, but looking down intently into the Christian camp.  The dog leapt up, fawning on the stranger with demonstrations of rapture; and he, turning in haste, stood face to face with Richard.

“Here!” was his exclamation, and a grasp was instantly laid upon his sword.

“Simon!” burst from Richard’s lips at the same moment, “dost not know me?”

“Thou, boy?” and the hold was relaxed.  “What lucky familiar sent thee hither?  What—thou art grown such a huge fellow that I had well-nigh struck thee down for Longshanks himself, had it not been for thy voice.  Thou hast his very bearing.”

“Simon!” again repeated Richard, in his extremity of amazement.  “What dost thou?  How camest thou here?  Whence—?”

“That thou shalt soon see,” said Simon.  “A right free and merry home and company have we up yonder,”—and he pointed towards Mount Lebanon.

“Thou and Guy?”

“No, no; Guy turned craven.  Could not endure our wanderings in the marshes and hills, pined for his wife forsooth, fell sick, and must needs go and give himself up to the Pope; so he sings the penitential psalms night and day.”

“And we heard thou wast dead at Siena.”

“Thou hearest many a false tale,” said Simon.  “Of my death thou shalt judge, if thou wilt turn thy horse and ride with me to our hill-fort of Ain Gebel, in Galilee.  They say ’tis the very one which King David or King Herod, whichever it was, could only take by letting down his men-at-arms in boxes!  I should like to see the boxes that we could not send skimming down the abyss!  And a wondrous place they have left us—vaults as cool as a convent wine-cellar, fountains out of the rock, marble columns.”

“But, brother, for whom do you hold it?  For the King of Cyprus or—?”

“For myself, boy!  For King Simon, an it like you better!  None can touch me or my merry band there, and a goodly company we are—pilgrims grown wiser, and runaway captives, and Druses, and bold Arabs too: and the choicest of many a heretic Armenian merchants’ caravan is ours, and of many a Saracen village; corn and wine, fair dames, and Damascus blades, and Arab steeds.  Nothing has been wanting to me but thee and vengeance, and both are, I hope, on the way!”

“Not I, certainly!” said Richard, shrinking back in horror: “I—a sworn crusader!”

“Tush, what are we but crusaders too, boy?  ’Tis all service against the Moslem!  Thy patron saint sent thee to me to-day from special care for thy safety.”

“How so!” exclaimed Richard.  “If peril threaten my Lord, I must be with him at once.”

“Much hast thou gained by hanging on upon him,” said Simon scornfully, glancing at Richard’s heels; “not so much as a pair of gilt spurs!  Creeping after him like a hound, thou hast not even the bones!”

“I have all I seek,”