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

Sir,” retorted, laughing, a fair open-faced youth in his novitiate.  “I shall some day warn Hal how our brethren, the Templars, are said to play at ball with tender babes on their lances.”

“No scandal about our brethren of the Temple, Rayland,” said Sir Robert, looking grave for a moment.—“Young Sir, it would be a favour if you would ride with us; we would gladly show you the way to Bednall Green.”

“I should rejoice to go, Sir,” returned Richard, “but I am of Prince Edward’s household—Richard Fowen; and my horse is on the other side of the river.”

“That is soon remedied,” said Sir Robert, who seemed to have taken a great fancy to Richard, either for the sake of his crossed shoulder, or of his kindness to the little plaything of the Spital.  “Our young brother, Engelbert von Fuchstein, has leave to tarry this night with his brother in the train of the King of the Romans, and his horse is at your service, if you will do our poor Spital the favour to tarry there this night, and ride it back in the morn to meet him at Westminster.”

Richard knew that this invitation might be safely accepted without danger of giving umbrage to the Prince, who was on the best terms with the Knights of the Hospital.  He therefore dismissed Gourdon and the other man-at-arms with a message explaining the matter; and warmly thanking the old Grand Prior, laid one hand on the saddle of the great ponderous beast that was led up to him, and vaulted on its back without touching the stirrup.

“Well done, my young master,” said Sir Robert, “it is easy to see you are of the Prince’s household.”

“I cannot yet do as the Prince can,” said Richard,—“take this leap in full armour.”

“No; and let me give you a bit of counsel, fair Sir.  Such pastimes are very well for the tiltyard, but they should be laid aside in the blessed Land, and strength reserved for the one cause and purpose.”  He crossed himself; and in the meantime, Bessee intimated her imperious purpose of not riding before Brother Hilary, but being perched before Richard on the enormous cream-coloured animal, whence he was looking down from a considerable elevation upon Sir Robert on his slender Arab.

“These are the German monsters that our brethren bring over,” said Sir Robert.  “Mark me, young brother, cumber not yourself with these beasts of Europe, which are good for nothing but food for foul birds in the East.  Purvey yourself of an Arab as soon as you land.  There is a rogue at Acre, one Ali by name, who will not cheat you more than is reasonable, so you mention my name to him, Sir Robert Darcy, at your service.”

“Thanks, reverend Father,” returned Richard, “but I am but a landless page, and the Prince mounts me.  Said you this poor man had been wounded in the late wars?”

“Ay, hacked and hewed worse than by the Infidels themselves!  Woeful it is that here, at home, men’s blood should be wasted on your own petty feuds.  This same Barons’ war now hath cost as much downright courage as would have brought us back to Jerusalem, and all thrown away, without a cause, with no honour, no hope.”

“Not without a cause,” Richard could not help saying.

“Nay,” said the old knight; “no cause is worth the taking of a life, save the cause of the Holy Sepulchre.  What be these matters of taxes and laws to ask a man to shed his blood for?  Alack, the temper of the cross-bearer is dying out!  I pray I may not see this Crusade end like half those I have beheld—and the cross on the shoulder become no better than a mockery.”

“That may scarcely be with such leaders as the Prince and the King of France,” said Richard.

“Well, well, the Prince is untried; and for King Louis, he is as holy a man as ever lived since King Godfrey of blessed memory, but he has bad luck, ever bad luck.  The Saints forefend, but I trow he will listen to some crazy counsel from Rome, belike, or some barefooted hermit—very holy, no doubt, but who does not know a Greek from a Saracen, or a horse’s head from his tail—and will go to some pestilential hole like that foul Egyptian swamp, where we stayed till our skin was the colour of an old boot, in hopes of converting the Sultan of Babylon, or the Old Man of the Mountain, or what not, and there he will stay till the flower of his forces have wasted away.”

“Were you in Egypt with King Louis?” eagerly exclaimed Richard.

“Ay, marry, was I, and a goodly land it is; but I saw many a good man-at-arms perish miserably in a marsh, who might have been the saving of the Holy City.  Why, I myself have never been the same man since!  Never could do a month’s service out of the infirmary at Acre, though after all there’s no work I like so well as the hospital business, and for the last five years I have had to stay here training young brethren!  Oh, young man!  I envy you your first stroke for the Holy Sepulchre!  Would that the Grand-Master would hear my entreaty.  I am too old to be worth sparing, and I would fain have one more chance of dying under the banner of the Order!—But I am setting you a bad example, son Raynal; a Hospitalier has no will.—And look you, young Sir Page, if you stay out at sunset in that clime, ’tis all up with you.  And you should veil your helmet well, or the sun smites on your head as deadly as a flake of Greek fire.”

So rambled on good old Sir Robert Darcy, Grand Prior of England, a perfect dragon among the Saracens, but everywhere else the mildest and most benevolent of men; his discourse strangely mingling together the deepest enthusiasm with a business-like common-sense appreciation of ways and means, and with minute directions, precautions, and anecdotes, gathered from his practical experience both as captain in the field, priest in the Church, and surgeon in the hospital, and all seen from the most sunshiny point of view.

Meanwhile, they were riding along the Strand, a beautiful open road, with grassy borders shelving down to the Thames.  They passed through the City of London.  The Hospital lay beyond the walls, but the Marshes of Moorfields that protected them were not passable without a long circuit; and the fortified gates stood open at Temple Bar, where the Hospitaliers, looking towards the Round Church and stately buildings of the Preceptory, saluted the white-cloaked figures moving about it, with courtesy grim and distant in all but Sir Robert Darcy, who could not even hate a Templar, a creature to the ordinary Hospitalier far more detestable than a Saracen.  On then, up ground beginning to rise, below which the little muddy stream called the Flete stagnated along its way, meandering to the Thames.  Thatched hovels and wooden booths left so narrow a passage that the horsemen were forced to move in single file, and did not gain a clearer space even when the stone houses of merchants began to stand thick on Ludgate Hill, their carved wooden balconies so projecting, that it would seem to have been an object with the citizens to be able to shake hands across the street.  The city was comparatively empty and quiet, as all the world were keeping holiday at Westminster; but even as it was, the passengers seemed to swarm in the streets, and knots of persons who had been unable to witness the spectacle, sat with gazing children upon the stairs outside the houses, to admire the fragments of the pageant that came their way.  Acclamations of delight greeted the appearance of the scarlet-mantled Hospitaliers, such as Richard had often heard in his boyhood, when riding in his father’s train, but far less frequently since he had been a part of the Prince’s retinue.  And equally diverse was the merry nod and smile of Sir Robert to each gaping shouting group of little ones, from the stately distant courtesy with which Edward returned the popular salutations.  He could be gracious—he could not be friendly except to a few.

They passed the capitular buildings of St. Paul’s, with the beautiful cathedral towering over them, and in its rear, numerous booths for the purchase of rosaries—recent inventions then of St. Dominic, the great friend of Richard’s stern grandfather, the persecutor of the Albigenses.  Sir Robert drew up, and declared he must buy one for the little maid as a remembrance of the day, and then found she was fast asleep; but he nevertheless purchased a black-beaded chaplet, giving for it one of the sorely-clipped coins of King Henry.

“Prithee let me have one likewise, holy Sir,” quoth Richard, “in memory of the talk that hath taught me so much of the import of my crusading vow.”

“Thou shalt bring me for it one of the olive of Bethlehem,” said Sir Robert; “I have given away all I brought from the East.  They are so great a boon to our poor sick folk that I wish I had brought twice as many, but to me they have always a Saracen look.  Your Moslem always fingers one much of the same fashion as he parleys.”

Ludgate, freshly built, and adorned with new figures to represent the fabulous King Lud, was not yet closed for the night; and the party came forth beyond the walls, with the desolate Moorfields to their left, and before them a number of rising villages clustered round their churches.

The Hospital, a grand fortified monastery, was already to be seen over the fields; but Sir Robert, sending home the rest of his troop, turned aside with Richard and Brother Hilary towards the common, with a border of cottages around it, which went by the name of Bednall Green.

Brother Hilary knew the hut inhabited by Blind Hal, and led the way to it.  Low and mud-built, thatched, and with a wattled door, it had a wretched appearance; but the old woman who came to the door was not ill clad.  “Blessings on you, holy Father!” she cried; “do I see the child, my lamb, my lady-bird!  Would that she may come in time to cheer her poor father!”

“How is it with him then, Gammer?” demanded Sir Robert, springing to the ground with the alacrity of a doctor anxious about his patient.

“Ill, very ill, Sir.  Whether the horse’s feet hurt his old wound, or whether it be the loss of the child, he hath done nought but moan and rave, and lie as one dead ever since they brought him home.  He is lying in one of the dead swoons now!  It were not well that the child saw him.”

But Bessee, awakening with a cry of joy, saw her borne, and struggled to go to her father, whose name she called on with all her might, disregarding the caresses of the old woman, and the endeavour made by Richard to restrain without alarming her, while Sir Robert went into the hut to endeavour to restore the sufferer.

Suddenly a cry broke from within; and Richard, turning at the voice, beheld the blind man sitting up on his pallet with arms outstretched.  “My child!—My Father! hast thou brought her to visit me in limbo?” he cried.

“He raves!” said Richard, using his strength to withhold the child, who broke out into a shriek.

“Nay, nay! she doth not abide here!” he exclaimed.  “Her spirit is pure!  My sins are not visited on her beyond the grave!”

“Thou art on the earthly side of the grave still, my son,” said Sir Robert, at the same time as Bessee sprang from Richard, and nestled on his breast, clinging to his neck.

“My babe—my Bessee!” he exclaimed, gathering her close to him.  “Living, living, indeed!  Yet how may it be!  Surely this is the other world.  That voice sounds not among the living!”

“It is the voice of the youth who saved thy child,” said the Grand Prior.

“Speak again!  Let him speak again!” implored the beggar.

“Can I do aught for you, good man?” asked Richard.

Again there was a strange start and thrill of amazement.

“Only for Heaven’s sake tell me who thou art!”

“A page of Prince Edward’s good man.  I am called Richard Fowen!  And who, for Heaven’s sake, are you?” added Richard, as Leonillo, who had been smelling about and investigating, threw himself on the blind man in a transport of caresses.  “Off, Leon—off!” cried Richard.  “It is but a dog!—Fear not, little one!—Tell me, tell me,” he added, trembling, as he knelt before the miserable object, holding back the eager Leonillo with one arm round his neck, “who art thou, thou ghost of former times?”

“Knowst me not, Richard?” returned a suppressed voice in Provençal.

“Henry!  Henry!” exclaimed Richard, and fell upon the foot of the low bed, weeping bitterly.  “Is it come to this?”

“Ay, even to this,” said the blind man, “that two sons of one father meet unknown—one with a changed name, the other with none at all, neither with the honoured one they were born to.”

“Alack, alack!” was all Richard could say at