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

unhappy matter, he should have been conversant with traitors, and thus that we might obtain intelligence from him.  Remember likewise the fellow who was found in the tent.”

“So!” said Edward, “an honourable youth hath been treated as a traitor, because of another springald’s opinion of his looks, and because a few yeomen thought he seemed over-anxious to save a few wretched captives, whom they knew to be guiltless.  Will there ever come a time when Englishmen will learn what is witness?”

“His name and lineage, brother,” began Edmund.

“That, gentles, is the witness upon which the wolf slew the lamb for fouling the stream.”

“Then you will not examine him?” asked Gloucester.

“Not as a suspected felon,” said Edward.  “One who by your own evidence was heedless of himself in seeking to save the helpless—nay, who spake of hasting to warn me—scarce merits such usage.  What consorts with his honour and my safety, I can trust to him to tell me as true friend and liegeman!” and the confiding smile with which he looked at Richard was like a sunbeam in a dark cloud.

“My Lord Prince,” objected Gloucester, “we cannot think that this is for your safety.”

“See here, Gloucester,” said Edward.  “Till my arm can keep my head again, double the guards, and search all envoys, under whatever pretext they may enter; but never for the rest of thy life brand a man with imprisonment till you have reasonable proof against him.  Thanks for your care of me, my Lords, but I can scarce yet brook long converse.  The council is dismissed.”

Richard, infinitely relieved, could hardly wait till he could safely speak to the Prince to express his gratitude and joy that he had been not only defended, but freed from all examination, so as to have been spared from denouncing his brother, and that the family had been spared from this additional stigma.  Edward, who like all reserved men could not endure the expression of thanks, even while their utter omission would have been wounding, cut him short.

“Tush, boy, Simon is as much my cousin as thy brother, and I would not help to throw fresh stains on the name that, but for my father’s selfish counsellors, would stand highest at home!  Besides,” he added, as one half ashamed of his generosity and willing to qualify it, “supposing it got abroad that he had aimed this stroke at the heir of England—why, then England’s honour would be concerned, and we should have stout Gilbert de Clare and all the rest of them wild to storm Simon in his Galilean fastness, without King Herod’s boxes, I trow.  Then would all the Druses, and the Maronites, and the Saracens, and the half-breeds, the worst of the whole, come down on them in some impassable gorge, and the troops I have taken such pains to keep in health and training would leave their bones in those doleful passes; and not for the sake of the Holy Sepulchre, but of my private quarrel.  No, no, Richard, we will keep our own counsel, and do our best that Simon may not get another chance, before I can move within the walls of Acre; and then we will spread our sails, and pray that the Holy Land may make a holier man of him.”

CHAPTER XII
THE GARDEN OF THE HOSPITAL

“And who is yon page lying cold at his knee?”—Scott.

Edward differed from Cœur de Lion in this, that he was one of the most abstemious men in his army, and disciplined himself at least as rigidly as he did other people.  And it was probably on this account that he did not fulfil Dame Idonea’s predictions, but recovered favourably, and by the end of a fortnight was able, in the first coolness of early morning, to ride gently into the city of Acre, where a few days previously the Princess Eleanor had given birth to a daughter.  She was christened Joan on the day of her father’s arrival, and afterwards became the special spoilt favourite of Edward, whose sternness gave place to excessive fondness among his children.  Moreover, she in the end became the wife of that same red-haired Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, who at this time stood holding his wax taper, and looking at the small swaddled morsel of royalty with all a bachelor’s contempt for infancy, and little dreaming that he beheld his future Countess.

Prince Edward had accepted the invitation of Sir Hugh de Revel, Grand Master of the Order of St. John, to take up his quarters in the Commandery of the brotherhood; and Richard was greatly relieved to have him there, since no watch or ward in the open camp could be so secure as this double fortress, protected in the first place by the walls of the city, and in the second by those of the Hospital itself, with its strict military and monastic discipline.

A wonderful place was that Hospital—infirmary, monastery, and castle, all in one, and with a certain Eastern grace and beauty of its own.  The deep massive walls, heavy towers, and portcullised gateway, were in the most elaborate and majestic style of defensive architecture; and the main building rose to a great height, filled with galleries of small, bare, rigid-looking cells, just large enough for a knight, his pallet, and his armour.  Below was a noble vaulted hall, the walls hung with well-tried hawberks, and shields and helmets which had stood many a dint; captured crescents and green banners waved as trophies over crooked scymetars and Damascus blades inlaid with sentences from the Koran in gold, and twisted cuirasses rich with barbaric gold and gems; the blazoned arms of the noblest families of France, Spain, England, Germany, and Italy, decked the panels and brightened the windows; while the stone pulpit for the reader showed that it was still a convent refectory.

The chapel was grave and massive, but at the same time gorgeous with colouring suited to eyes accustomed to Oriental brightness of hue; the chancel walls were inlaid with the porphyry, jasper, and marble, of exquisite tints, that came from the mountains around; the shrines were touched with gold, and the roofs and vaultings painted with fretwork of unapproachable brilliance and purity of tints; yet all harmonizing together, as only Eastern colouring can harmonize, and giving a sense of rest and coolness.

Within those huge thick walls, whose windows, sunk deep into their solid mass, only let in threads of jewelled light, under their solemn circular richly carved brows, between those marble pillars; the elder ones, round and solid, with Romanesque mighty strength; the new graceful clusters of shining blood-red marble shafts, surrounding a slender white one, all banded together with gold, under the vaults of the stone roof, upon the mosaic floor—there was always a still refreshing coolness, like the “shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”  One transept had a window communicating with the upper room of the Infirmary, so that the sick who there lay in their beds might take part in the services in the chapel.

The outer court, with the great fortified gateway towards the street, was a tilt-yard, where martial exercises took place as in any other castle; but pass through the great hall to the inner court, of which the chapel formed one side, and where could such cloisters have been found in the West?  Their heavy columns and deep-browed arches clinging against the thick walls, afforded unfailing shelter from the sun, and their coolness was increased by the marble of the pavement, inlaid in rich intricate mosaics.

Extending around the interior of the external wall, they enclosed an exquisite Eastern garden, perfumed with flowering shrubs, shady with trees, and lovely with tall white lilies, hollyhocks, purple irises, stars of Bethlehem, and many another Eastern flower, which would send forth seeds or roots for the supply of the trim gardens of Western convents.  The soft bubbling of fountains gave a sense of delicious freshness; doves flew hither and thither, and their soft murmuring was heard in the branches; and at certain openings in their foliage might be seen the azure of the Mediterranean, which little John of Dunster persisted in calling too blue—why could it not be a sober proper-coloured sea like his own Bristol Channel?

Richard was very happy here.  There was something of the same charm as in modern days is experienced in staying at a college.  The brethren were thorough monks in religious observance, but they were also high-bred nobles, and had seen many wild adventures, and hard-fought battles, and moreover, had entertained in turn almost every variety of pilgrim who had visited the Holy Land; so that none could have been found who had more of interest to tell, or more friendly hospitable kindness towards their guests.  Richard was a favourite there, not only as a friend of Reginald Ferrers, but as acquainted with the Grand Prior, Sir Robert Darcy, whose memory was still green in Palestine.  Tales of his feats of mighty strength still lingered at Acre; how he had held together, by his single arm, the gates of a house in the retreat from Damietta, against a whole troop of Mamelukes, until every Christian had left it on the other side, and then had slowly followed them, not a Moslem daring to attack him; how he had borne off wounded knights on his back, and on sultry marches would load himself with the armour of any one who was exhausted, and never fail to declare it was exactly what he liked best!  More than once it had been intimated that Richard de Montfort would be gladly accepted as a brother of the Order; and he often thought over the offer, but not only was he unwilling to separate himself from the Prince, but he felt it needful at any rate to return to England to judge of the condition of his brother Henry, ere becoming one of an Order where he could no longer dispose of himself.

He was resolved never to quit the Prince till he had seen him beyond the reach of any machination of his brother’s, nor indeed was it easy to think of parting at all, for Edward, who had relaxed all coldness of manner towards him ever since the affair at Trapani, had now become warmly affectionate and confidential.  The Prince was still far from having regained his usual health, his arm was still in a scarf, and was often painful, and the least exposure to the sun brought on violent headache, which some attributed to the poison in the scratch on his forehead, but the Hospitaliers, more reasonably, ascribed to a slight sun-stroke.  Their character of infirmarers rendered them especially considerate hosts, and they never overwhelmed their guest with the stiff formalities of courtesy for his rank’s sake, but allowed him to follow his inclination, and this led him to spend great part of his time in a pavilion, a thoroughly Eastern erection, which stood in the garden, at the top of the white marble steps leading to a fountain of delicious sparkling water, and sheltered from the sun by the dark solid horizontal branches of a noble Cedar of Lebanon, which tradition connected with the visit of the Empress Helena.  Here, lying upon mats placed on the steps, the convalescent Prince would rest for hours, sometimes holding converse with the Grand Master, or counsel with his visitors from the camp; but more often in the dreamy repose of recovery, silent or talking to Richard of matters that lay deep within his heart; but which, perhaps, nothing but this softening species of waking dream would have drawn from him.  He would dwell on those two hero models of his boyhood, so diverse, yet so closely connected together by their influence upon his character, Louis of France, and Simon of Leicester; and of the impression both had left, that judgment, mercy, faith, and the subject’s welfare, were the primary duties of a sovereign—an idea only now and then glimpsed by the feudal sovereigns, who thought that the people lived for them rather than they for the people.  And when, as in England, the King’s good-nature had been abused by swarms of foreign-born relations, who had not even his claims on the people, no wonder the yoke had been galling beyond endurance.  Of the end Edward could not bear to think—of the broken friendships—the enmity of kindred—the faults on either side that had embittered the strife, till he had been forced to become the sword in the hands of the royal party to liberate his father—and with consequences that had so far out-run his powers of controlling them.  To make England the land of law, peace, and order, that Simon de Montfort would fain have seen it, was his present aspiration; and then, he said, when all was purified at home, it might yet be permitted to him to return and win back the Holy City, Jerusalem, to the Christian world.  In the meantime, as a memorial of this, his earnest longing, he was causing, at great expense and labour, one of the huge stones of the Temple to be transported over the hills, and embarked on board a ship, to carry home with him.  Richard, meantime, learnt