The Talisman by Walter Scott (which ebook reader txt) 📖

I promise thee our Queen will not think herself welcome, if she lacks the opportunity to thank her royal host for her most princely reception.”

Saladin bent his head gracefully, but declined the invitation.

“I must attend the wounded man,” he said. “The leech leaves not his patient more than the champion the lists, even if he be summoned to a bower like those of Paradise. And further, royal Richard, know that the blood of the East flows not so temperately in the presence of beauty as that of your land. What saith the Book itself?—Her eye is as the edge of the sword of the Prophet, who shall look upon it? He that would not be burnt avoideth to tread on hot embers—wise men spread not the flax before a flickering torch. He, saith the sage, who hath forfeited a treasure, doth not wisely to turn back his head to gaze at it.”

Richard, it may be believed, respected the motives of delicacy which flowed from manners so different from his own, and urged his request no further.

“At noon,” said the Soldan, as he departed, “I trust ye will all accept a collation under the black camel-skin tent of a chief of Kurdistan.”

The same invitation was circulated among the Christians, comprehending all those of sufficient importance to be admitted to sit at a feast made for princes.

“Hark!” said Richard, “the timbrels announce that our Queen and her attendants are leaving their gallery—and see, the turbans sink on the ground, as if struck down by a destroying angel. All lie prostrate, as if the glance of an Arab's eye could sully the lustre of a lady's cheek! Come, we will to the pavilion, and lead our conqueror thither in triumph. How I pity that noble Soldan, who knows but of love as it is known to those of inferior nature!”

Blondel tuned his harp to his boldest measure, to welcome the introduction of the victor into the pavilion of Queen Berengaria. He entered, supported on either side by his sponsors, Richard and Thomas Longsword, and knelt gracefully down before the Queen, though more than half the homage was silently rendered to Edith, who sat on her right hand.

“Unarm him, my mistresses,” said the King, whose delight was in the execution of such chivalrous usages; “let Beauty honour Chivalry! Undo his spurs, Berengaria; Queen though thou be, thou owest him what marks of favour thou canst give.—Unlace his helmet, Edith;—by this hand thou shalt, wert thou the proudest Plantagenet of the line, and he the poorest knight on earth!”

Both ladies obeyed the royal commands—Berengaria with bustling assiduity, as anxious to gratify her husband's humour, and Edith blushing and growing pale alternately, as, slowly and awkwardly, she undid, with Longsword's assistance, the fastenings which secured the helmet to the gorget.

“And what expect you from beneath this iron shell?” said Richard, as the removal of the casque gave to view the noble countenance of Sir Kenneth, his face glowing with recent exertion, and not less so with present emotion. “What think ye of him, gallants and beauties?” said Richard. “Doth he resemble an Ethiopian slave, or doth he present the face of an obscure and nameless adventurer? No, by my good sword! Here terminate his various disguises. He hath knelt down before you unknown, save by his worth; he arises equally distinguished by birth and by fortune. The adventurous knight, Kenneth, arises David, Earl of Huntingdon, Prince Royal of Scotland!”

There was a general exclamation of surprise, and Edith dropped from her hand the helmet which she had just received.

“Yes, my masters,” said the King, “it is even so. Ye know how Scotland deceived us when she proposed to send this valiant Earl, with a bold company of her best and noblest, to aid our arms in this conquest of Palestine, but failed to comply with her engagements. This noble youth, under whom the Scottish Crusaders were to have been arrayed, thought foul scorn that his arm should be withheld from the holy warfare, and joined us at Sicily with a small train of devoted and faithful attendants, which was augmented by many of his countrymen to whom the rank of their leader was unknown. The confidants of the Royal Prince had all, save one old follower, fallen by death, when his secret, but too well kept, had nearly occasioned my cutting off, in a Scottish adventurer, one of the noblest hopes of Europe.—Why did you not mention your rank, noble Huntingdon, when endangered by my hasty and passionate sentence? Was it that you thought Richard capable of abusing the advantage I possessed over the heir of a King whom I have so often found hostile?”

“I did you not that injustice, royal Richard,” answered the Earl of Huntingdon; “but my pride brooked not that I should avow myself Prince of Scotland in order to save my life, endangered for default of loyalty. And, moreover, I had made my vow to preserve my rank unknown till the Crusade should be accomplished; nor did I mention it save IN ARTICULO MORTIS, and under the seal of confession, to yonder reverend hermit.”

“It was the knowledge of that secret, then, which made the good man so urgent with me to recall my severe sentence?” said Richard. “Well did he say that, had this good knight fallen by my mandate, I should have wished the deed undone though it had cost me a limb. A limb! I should have wished it undone had it cost me my life—-since the world would have said that Richard had abused the condition in which the heir of Scotland had placed himself by his confidence in his generosity.”

“Yet, may we know of your Grace by what strange and happy chance this riddle was at length read?” said the Queen Berengaria.

“Letters were brought to us from England,” said the King, “in which we learned, among other unpleasant news, that the King of Scotland had seized upon three of our nobles, when on a pilgrimage to Saint Ninian, and alleged, as a cause, that his heir, being supposed to be fighting in the ranks of the Teutonic Knights against the heathen of Borussia, was, in fact, in our camp, and in our power; and, therefore, William proposed to hold these nobles as hostages for his safety. This gave me the first light on the real rank of the Knight of the Leopard; and my suspicions were confirmed by De Vaux, who, on his return from Ascalon, brought back with him the Earl of Huntingdon's sole attendant, a thick-skulled slave, who had gone thirty miles to unfold to De Vaux a secret he should have told to me.”

“Old Strauchan must be excused,” said the Lord of Gilsland. “He knew from experience that my heart is somewhat softer than if I wrote myself Plantagenet.”

“Thy heart soft? thou commodity of old iron and Cumberland flint, that thou art!” exclaimed the King.—“It is we Plantagenets who boast soft and feeling hearts. Edith,” turning to his cousin with an expression which called the blood into her cheek, “give me thy hand, my fair cousin, and, Prince of Scotland, thine.”

“Forbear, my lord,” said Edith, hanging back, and endeavouring to hide her confusion under an attempt to rally her royal kinsman's credulity. “Remember you not that my hand was to be the signal of converting to the Christian faith the Saracen and Arab, Saladin and all his turbaned host?”

“Ay, but the wind of prophecy hath chopped about, and sits now in another corner,” replied Richard.