The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade, Charlotte M. Yonge [top e book reader .txt] 📗

Idonea endeavouring to check the flow of blood from his wound.  The elbow of his other arm was on his knee, and his head on his hand, but the opening of the curtain let in the light; he looked up, and Richard saw how deathly white his face had become, and the streaks of blood from the scratch upon his brow.  He greeted Richard, however, with the look of recognition to which his young squire had now become used—not exactly a smile, but a well-satisfied welcome; and though he spoke low and feebly to his brother who stood near him, Richard caught the words with a thrill of emotion.

“Let him near me, Edmund.  He hath a ready hand, and may aid thee, sweet wife.  Thou art wearying thyself.”  Then, as Richard approached, “Thou hast sped well!  I looked not for thee so soon.”

“Alack, my Lord!” said Richard, “I hurried on to warn you.  Ah! would I had been in time!”

“Thy little pupil, John, did all man could do,” said Edward, languidly smiling.  “But what—hast aught in charge to say to me?  Be brief, for I am strangely dizzy.”

“My Lord,” said Richard, “the archers and men-at-arms are furiously wrath with the Saracens.  They would wreak their vengeance on the prisoners, who at least are guiltless!”

“The knaves!” exclaimed Edward promptly.  “Why looks not Gloucester to this?”

“My Lord, the Earl saith that he would not command the slaughter, but that he will not forbid it.”

“Saints and angels!” burst forth the Prince, and to the amazement of all, he started at once on his feet, and striding through the bystanders to the opening of the tent, he looked out on the crowd, who were already rushing towards the inclosure where their victims were penned.  Raising his mighty voice as in a battle-day, he called aloud to them to halt, turn back, and hear him.  They turned, and beheld the lofty form in the entrance of the tent, wrapped in a long loose robe, which, as well as his hair, was profusely stained with blood, his wan face, however, making that marble dignity and sternness of his even more awful and majestic as he spoke aloud.  “So, men, you would have me go down to my grave blood-stained and accursed by the death of guiltless captives?  And I pray you, what is to be the lot of our countrymen, now on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, if you thus deal with our prisoners, taken in war?  Senseless bloody-minded hounds that ye are, mark my words.  The life of one of you for the life of a Saracen captive; and should I die, I lay my curse on ye all, if every man of them be not set free the hour my last breath is drawn.  Do you hear me, ye cravens?”

Unsparing, unconciliatory as ever, even when most merciful and generous, Edward turned, but reeled as he re-entered the tent, and his dizziness recurring, needed the support of both his brother and Richard to lay him down on the couch.

The Grand Master of the Temple renewed his assurance that this was a token of the poison, and Eleanor was unheeded when she declared that her dear lord had been affected in the same manner before his wound, ever since indeed the Whit Sunday when he had ridden home from the great Church of St. John of Acre in the full heat of the sun.

Dame Idonea was muttering the mediæval equivalent for fiddlesticks, as plain as her respect for the Temple would allow her.

At that moment the leech whom Hamlyn had been sent into the town to summon, made his appearance, and fully confirmed the Templar’s opinion.  Neither the wizened Greek physician, nor the dignified Templar, considered the soft but piteous assurance of the wife that the venom had at once been removed by her own lips as more than mere feminine folly, and Dame Idonea’s real experience of knights thus saved, and on the other hand of the fatal consequences of rude surgery in such a climate, were disregarded as an old woman’s babble.  Her voice waxed shrill and angry, and her antagonists’ replies in Lingua Franca, mixed with Arabic, Latin, and Greek, rang through the tent, till the Prince could bear it no longer.

“Peace,” he said, with an asperity unlike his usual stern patience, “I had liefer brook your knives than your tongues!  Without further jangling, tell me clearly, learned physician, the peril of either submitting or not submitting to your steel.”

The Greek told, with as little tergiversation as was in his nature, that he viewed a refusal as certain death, but several times Dame Idonea was bursting out upon him, and Edward had to hold up his finger to silence her.

“Now, kind lady,” quoth he, “let me hear the worst you foretell for me from your experience.”

Dame Idonea did not spare him either the fate of Cœur de Lion, the dangers of fever and pain, and above all “of that strange enchantment that binds the teeth together and forbids a man to swallow his food.”  Poor Eleanor looked at him imploringly all the time, but as none of them had ever heard of the circulation of the blood, they could not tell that her simple remedy had been truly efficacious, and that if it had been otherwise the incisions would now come too late.  Thus the balance of prudence made itself appear to be on the side of the physician, and for him the Prince decided.  “Mi Doña,” he said, ever his most caressing term for her, “it must be so!  I think not lightly of what thou hast done for me, but, as matters stand, too much hangs upon this life of mine for me not to be bound to run no needless risk for fear of a little pain.  If I live and speak now, next to highest Heaven it is owing to thee; and when we came on this holy war, sweet Eleanor, didst thou not promise to hinder me from naught that a true warrior of the Cross ought to undergo?  And is this the land to shrink from the Cross?”

Alas! to Eleanor the pang was the belief in the uselessness of his suffering and danger.  She never withstood his will, but physically she was weak, and her weeping was piteous in its silence.  Edward bade his brother lead her away; and Edmund, after the usual fashion, vented his own perplexity and distress upon the most submissive person in his way.  He assumed more resistance on the part of his gentle sister-in-law than she made, and carrying her from the tent, roughly told her, silent as she was, that it was better that she should scream and cry than all England wail and lament.

And so Eleanor’s devoted deed, the true saving of her husband, has lived on as a mere delusive tradition, weakly credited by the romantic, while the credit of his recovery has been retained by the Knight-Templars’ leech.  Not a sound was uttered by the Prince while under those hands; but when his wife was permitted to return to him, she found him in a dead faint, and the silver reliquary she had left with him crushed flat and limp between his fingers.

Richard had given his attendance all the time, and for several hours afterwards, during which the Princess hung over her husband, endeavouring to restore him from the state of exhaustion in which he scarcely seemed conscious of anything but her presence.  Late in the evening, some one came to the entrance of the tent, and beckoned to the young squire; he came out expecting to receive some message, but to his extreme surprise found himself in the grasp of the Provost Marshal.

“On what charge?” he demanded, so soon as he was far enough beyond the precincts of his tent not to risk a disturbance.

“By the command of the council.  On the charge of being privy to the attempt on the Prince’s life.”

“By whom preferred?” asked Richard.

“By the Lord Hamlyn de Valence.”

Richard attempted not another word.  In effect the condition of the Prince seemed to him so hopeless that his most acute suffering at the moment was in the being prevented from ministering to him, or watching for a last word or look of recognition.  He had no heart for self-vindication, even if he had not known its utter futility with men who had been prejudiced against him from the outset.  Nor had he the opportunity, for the Provost Marshal conducted him at once to the tent where he was to be in ward for the night, a heap of straw for him to lie upon, and a guard of half a dozen archers outside; and there was he left to his despairing prayers for the Prince’s life.  He could dwell on nothing else, there was no room in his mind for any thought but of that glory of manhood thus laid low, and of the anguish of the sweet face of the Princess.

“Sir—!” there was a low murmur near him—“now is the time.  I have brought an archer’s gown and barrett, and we may easily get past the yeomen.”  These last words were uttered, as on hands and knees a figure whose dark outline could barely be discerned, crept under the border of the tent.

“Who art thou?” hastily inquired Richard.

“You should know me, Sir,—I have done you many a good turn, and served your house truly.”

“Talk not of truth, thou traitor,” said Richard, recognizing Dustifoot’s voice.  “Knowst thou that but for the Prince’s clemency thou hadst a year ago been out of the reach of the cruel evil thou hast now shared in.”

“Nay, now, Lord Richard,” returned the man, “you should not treat thus an honest fellow that would fain do you service.”

“I need no service such as thine,” returned Richard.  “Thy service has made my brothers murderers, and brought ruin and woe unspeakable upon the land.”

“Beshrew me,” muttered the man, “but one would have thought the young damoiseau would have had more feeling about his father’s death!  But I swore to do Sir Simon’s bidding, so that is no concern of mine; and he bade me, if any one strove to lay hands on you, Sir, to lead you down to Kishon Brook, where he will meet us with a plump of spears.”

“Meet him then,” said Richard, “and say to him that if from his crag above, on Carmel, he sees me hung on the gallows tree as a traitor, he may count that I am willingly offered for our family sin!  Ay, and that if he thinks an old man’s hairs brought down to the grave, a broken-hearted wife, helpless orphans, and a land without a head, to be a grateful offering to my father, let him enjoy the thought of how the righteous Earl would have viewed all the desolation that will fall on England without the one—one scholar who knew how to value and honour his lessons.”

“Hush!  Sir,” hastily interposed Dustifoot; but it was too late, the murmur of voices had already been caught by the guard, and quick as he was to retreat, their torches discovered him as he was creeping out, and he was dragged back by the feet, and the light held up to his face, while many voices proclaimed him as the rogue who had been foremost in admitting the assassin to the royal tent.  It was from the tumult of voices that Richard first understood that on examining the body of the murderer, it had been ascertained that he was neither a Bedouin nor one of the assassins belonging to the Old Man of the Mountain, but an European, probably a Provençal; and this, added to Hamlyn’s representation of Richard’s words, together with what the Earls of Lancaster and Gloucester recollected, had directed the suspicion upon himself.  And here was, as it seemed, undeniable evidence of his connection with the plot!

The miserable Dustifoot, vainly imploring his intercession, was tied hand and foot, and the guard returned to the outside of the tent, except one archer, who thought it needful to bring in his torch, and keep the prisoners in sight.

The night passed wearily, and with morning Dustifoot was removed to a place of captivity more befitting his degree; but of the Prince, Richard only heard that he continued to be in great danger.  No attempt on the part of the council was made to examine their prisoner; and Richard suspected, as time wore on, that no one chose to act in this time of suspense for fear of incurring the lion-like wrath of Edward in the event of his recovery, but that in case of his death, small would be his own chances of life.  Death had fewer horrors for the lonely boy than it would have had for one with whom life had been brighter.  In battle for the Cross, or in shielding his Prince’s life, it would have been welcome, but death, branded with vile ingratitude, as a traitor to that master, was abhorrent.  Shrunk up in the corner of the tent, half asleep after the night’s vigil, yet too miserable for the entire oblivion of rest,