Part 40 (1/2)
Rollo, great steed, endured the thirst with a quiet fort.i.tude that let him survive when half the cavaliers of the army were bestriding mules and oxen. Sebastian, too, bore up, shrewdly remarking, as was his way, that his life of fast and abstinence had advantages in this world as well as in the world to come. Herbert, too, seemed unconquerable; but what with the losses at Dorylaeum and the thirst, Richard saw his company thinned in a way to make his heart sick, even had this been all.
Finally, one day, when the last watercourse was dried up and death stared all in the face, certain knights saw their dogs slinking into camp, and behold, sand on their coats and mud on paws! Keen eyes tracked them; and, hid behind the bleak mountains, the searchers found a river, broad, still, stately, sweeping through its narrow gorge.
Hither rushed all the host, soldier and beast. Had the Seljouks been by then, they could have slain their foes to a man, for the Christians forgot all save water--water!--sweeter, more precious, than spiced wine. They drank till from very surfeit they fell down stricken; and three hundred died, slain by the element of life.
This was the end of the great horror. They found new streams; the parching valleys began to sprinkle with green; they saw once more fields and trees and vineyards. ”I, the Lord, will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water;” so repeated good Bishop Adhemar, the father of the army; and all who heard cried ”Amen.” And the cry was again, ”G.o.d wills it! To Jerusalem!” not despairing now, but rejoicing, confident; for after so great a trial to their faith, need the Most High prove them more? Then the march quickened, the _jongleurs_ played merrily, there were jests and tales around the camp-fires; and they began to hope for one more pa.s.sage-at-arms with the infidel before taking the Holy City--as if Heaven had not saved them once already! Yet there was a tone of sadness in the host, for the line was much shorter now. Where was he who had left no friend on those burning sands or at Dorylaeum? Troopers were trudging on foot; extra arms and baggage had been thrown to the wolves long ago; not a man in the army that had not grown a dusty beard. Once when Richard polished his s.h.i.+eld so that it shone as a mirror, he saw his face upon it. He scarce knew himself, what with the stiff beard and the fresh scars of the battle, and those lines drawn above the eyes.
”_Heh_,” cried he, forcing a jest to Theroulde, who sat by the tent mending a crossbow, ”how would the fair ladies at Palermo who danced with me after the tourney regard me now?”
Theroulde tugged at the hairs on his own chin.
”If we see no razor ere long, fair lord, we may swear by our beards as did Charlemagne, were they but whiter, and, as the song has it, of two hundred years' growth.”
”Verily,” answered Richard, making s.h.i.+ft to keep a merry face, ”I think I have lived two hundred years in the past month; and if troubles make white hairs, the saints know I am like to become most venerable.”
Theroulde said no more, and Richard, looking into the s.h.i.+eld, thought in his heart, ”Were Mary to see me now, would she still love me?”
But the answer came, ”Though your face were changed black as an Ethiopian's, yet she would love you!” Then the further thought, at which Richard's soul grew black as night: ”Should he never--never in this world--set eyes on Mary again? Why had G.o.d dealt with him thus?
Why should she suffer for his sin,--even if it had not been purged at Clermont?” Each day Richard's face grew more terrible; men feared him and praised his holy zeal against the infidels.
Thus the host came to the pleasant city of Antiochetta. Time would fail to tell of all their later troubles: how Tancred and Baldwin, brother of G.o.dfrey, took Tarsus and quarrelled over its mastery; how Baldwin seized Edessa and founded there a princ.i.p.ality; how the great army trudged its weary way across Lycaonia and mounted the rugged steeps of the ”Mountain of the Devil.” Many a stout man-at-arms died by the way, of sheer weariness; but the host pressed on. ”G.o.d wills it! To Jerusalem!” was still the cry, and the ranks closed up.
Then leaving Marash and descending Taurus, they met new foes: no more Turks, but bronzed Arabs on roe-limbed steeds, men armed with cimeters of Damascus, and bright with the silks and cottons of Ispahan and Bussorah. Richard was a busy scout-master now, for he and the few other Christians who came from Sicily alone could speak the Arabic, and need not trust to uncertain interpreters. So he rode before the host with his forty knights, no spirit madder than he,--a very St.
George when he fell upon the Moslems.
When they were close to Artesia on their way to invest Antioch, several Arab riders fell into Richard's hands, and he put to them the inevitable question:--
”Dogs,--can you tell me if Iftikhar Eddauleh, one time emir in Sicily, is in Syria, and where did he part company with Kilidge Arslan?”
And the men answered, all trembling:--
”Mercy, O Cid! Your slaves only know that the Emir Iftikhar is great among the Ismaelians. Report has it that he has now gone to Alamont to see his lord Ha.s.san-Sabah.”
”And you know nothing--nothing--” words spoken with awful intensity--”of a certain Christian lady, his captive?”
The men saw he had gladly paid them their weight in gold, if they could have told aught; but they dared not lie.
”Nothing, lord;--we are of the following of Yaghi-Sian of Antioch, and know of the Emir Iftikhar only by name.”
”_Fiat voluntas Tua_,” muttered Richard, and he sent the prisoners to the rear to be further questioned by Duke G.o.dfrey. But he was more reckless now in the forays and skirmishes than ever. All men said he was seeking death; and Sebastian gave him warning:--
”Son, you are a chosen warrior of Our Lord. His cause is not served by throwing your life away. Beware lest, in running into peril, you do great sin!”
”Ah, father!” was the response, ”what have I left save to slay as many infidels as I can and die! Yet you are right; die I must not, until I have struck down Iftikhar Eddauleh and avenged--” but he did not speak the name.
The next day Richard led his men under the city of Aleppo, and scattered some of the best of the light horse of Redouan, the local emir. But the walls were high. Report had it there was plunder in the palaces without the walls; some of the knights wished to attack. ”We fight for Christ, not for gold and jewels!” said Richard, sternly, and led away.
And now they were in Syria. Before them lay a rolling green country, fairer than Sicily even,--a deeper blue, a brighter sun, than in Provence. The warm wind bore to them the sniff of the sand-dunes, spiced groves, and genii's islands far to southward. They trod a strange soil, strange flowers underfoot, strange birds in the air, strange leaves on the trees. All the suns.h.i.+ne, however, did not brighten Richard Longsword. Gone! Parents, brother, sister,--ah, G.o.d!
wife also, and only knightly honor and revenge left. Let him slay Iftikhar and see the cross above Jerusalem, and then! but he fought back the black thoughts, as he had many a time before. Day and night he rode at the head of his men, who whispered his bones were steel, he was so tireless.