"You, too, prate evil, like your cursed sister!" cried Iftikhar. Then he asked Zeyneb very carefully as to the route likely to be taken by the Crusaders, the time of their arrival in Asia, and the like. After that he sent for a certain Eybek, one of the trustiest and most skilful of the "devoted," and dismissed him with this last command:—
"But Richard Longsword slay not. In my own time will I deal with him, man to man. Rather let him live, and eat his pangs as I have eaten mine, and know that I have borne away his prize."
CHAPTER XXIV
HOW THEY SLEW THE FIRST INFIDEL
Richard and Mary made the toilsome journey across Lombardy and Dalmatia with trials enough to expiate many sins, before Count Raymond's host reached Constantinople. There also Emperor Alexius gave the Crusaders chill greeting, and earned many curses. Yet when Richard saw the riches of the "City guarded of God," and heard how the first hordes, led by Peter the Hermit and Walter Lackpenny, had lighted like locusts on its suburbs, and had sacked palace and church as though despoiling very infidels, Longsword did not marvel that Alexius thought needful to deal warily with later comers. Here for the first time he learned the fate of the first peasant hordes,—how, to save his city from ruin, Alexius had ferried them across the Bosphorus. Left then to the Turks' tender mercies, the Sultan of Nicæa had pounced upon them with his light cavalry and cut them short in their sins. Peter the Hermit had escaped to Constantinople; his followers had perished almost to a man; and so began the great outpouring of life-blood in the long agony of the Crusade.
Small wonder Alexius Comnenus saw in his later guests doubtful friends or worse! Or that with all his matchless guile he sought pledges from them, that their coming might bring blessing rather than destruction to his empire; for the blunt Franks openly swore that the schismatic Greeks were but one degree better than Moslems. So day followed day of intrigue and lie-giving; the Augustus bickering and haggling with Raymond, Godfrey, and the other Latin chiefs. In the meantime Richard had time to learn the marvels of this great city of the Cæsars. What city like it! Palermo had not one tithe its wealth. Its walls might mock all the chivalry of France. Where in the West was one building so notable as were a score along the Mesa, the great street from the "Golden Gate" to the "Sacred Palace"? Everywhere Corinthian columns, veined marbles, bronzes that nigh seemed breathing, palaces, churches a hundred and more; great fora where swelled a mighty traffic; merchants whose shops boasted the luxurious wares of Persia, China, Ind; and multitudes on every street—Greek, Bulgar, Russian, Armenian, Jew. To Richard the scene was for long an enchanted confusion; and he marvelled to see how to Mary the pomp and bustle alike came as the common course of life. When he rode at her side through the humming city, or felt the light bark spring under the oar, as they shot up the Golden Horn or toward Chrysopolis, he was fain to question how any one here born and bred could find joy in coarser, wilder Frankland.
Together the two had been in St. Sophia, monarch of churches, had seen the great dome swimming on its sea of light above its forty windows; had heard the choir sing as angels the praise of "Mary, God-bearer, Giver of Victory." And Richard's soul had been almost carried aloft by the throb of the stately service. Again in the street, he said: "Dear life, I feel as if I were but just plucked down from heaven. What have I done that you love me so; that you can so cheerfully leave all this, and dwell with me in our rude, bare West?" And Mary, as she rode beside him, answered, smiling: "Why? And can one live forever in the great church, and eat and drink music? Is all life a rowing from Chalcedon to Prinkipo? Ah, Richard, could I be happy to spend my days after the manner of these ladies of Constantinople,—watched like cats by sleek eunuchs, and kept close that our masters may stroke us? Is it better to listen to the music of St. Sophia and to read Sophocles and Herodotus; or to ride, hawk on fist, over the merry country with you at my side, to feel the wild wind tossing my hair, to sniff the breeze in the free woods, and think how sweet a thing is life?"
"Then you are true Frank at heart!" laughed her husband, "despite your Greek name and learning."
"I am the wife of Richard de St. Julien," answered she, very seriously; "and he is a mighty baron of France."
So they viewed the great city through each other's eyes, and Richard grew humble as he saw how much wit heaven had granted those Greeks he once despised. At last the negotiating ended; the Emperor came down from his dignity; the princes swore him a loose manner of fealty; Bohemond of Tarentum, the most covetous of the chiefs, abated his demands. On a day never to be forgotten, the imperial galleys bore the host across the narrow strait. "Asia!" the cry of each knight as he kissed the very soil; at last they were fairly set to go to Jerusalem!
And now the all-reigning desire was to slay infidels. Not many leagues away lay a great paynim stronghold, Nicæa, capital of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Roum,—with fighting promised of a right knightly kind. Merry the music, and merrier the hearts of the hundred thousands, that May season, as the host swept in flashing steel and unsoiled bleaunts past old Nicomedia under the blue Bithynian sky, the hills all bright and green in springtime glory.
"Sure, Our Lord is with us!" cried Richard. "I feel a giant's strength!" But Sebastian plodded on with bowed head. "Boast not," was the reply; "for our sins we all may yet be sorely chastened."
"But is not God on our side, father?"
"Yes, truly; but it shall be even as with the band of Gideon. Of thirty and two thousand there were left to fall on the Midianites three hundred; and to be among these, may we be worthy!"
At this Richard laughed, looking off to the long lines of bright hauberks and forests of lances, far as the eye could reach; yet he had not laughed, had he known that of the six hundred thousand of fighting-men that crossed into Asia, scarce fifty thousand were to see with mortal eye the Holy City. But for the moment the skies seemed very bright, and the shadows commenced creeping only when forth from the forest stole ragged wretches, nigh starving, refugees from Peter the Hermit's rout. These told how Kilidge Arslan had slaughtered man, woman, and child, when he stormed the camp of Walter Lackpenny. Then, when the host advanced a little farther, they came to a wide heap of bones, more than could be counted, bleaching in the sun, and the crows still a black cloud above; for here had been the first battle and the first defeat. Loud rose the oaths and threats of vengeance from peasant and baron; the lines advanced in closer array, the music lessened, every lance was ready; for now at last they were treading on the soil of the infidel.
Richard Longsword rode with the three thousand pioneers that Duke Godfrey sent ahead to plant crosses by the wayside as guides to the hosts who came after. Thus it befell, the saints granted that he should be among the first knights to set eyes on the unbelievers. With Prince Tancred, Bohemond's valiant nephew,—who had not forgotten the lists at Palermo,—Richard saw a band of horsemen whizzing ahead, and, lo, as the Christian riders drew near, the Turks' little crooked bows began spitting out barbed arrows, which glanced harmlessly on the chain mail, but now and then wounded a horse. "Rash infidels,—singled out doubtless by Satan for destruction,"—so Prince Tancred cried when he couched his lance; and away went the whole squadron of knights. The Seljouks wheeled like lightning, and were off; their bony Tartar horses flew madly under the spur, while the men, bending dexterously in their saddles, launched their shafts. But destruction was upon them; the Christians rode them down one after another; some were lanced, some taken; a few escaped, howling in a truly devilish fashion, to tell the tale to their fellow-unbelievers. It had been so easy for the cavaliers, that they rallied one another on the prowess of the day.
"Ha! De St. Julien," Tancred would cry,—"how many paladins have you slain?" And Richard would answer, "As many as you, fair lord; but who is this grand soldan you have strapped to your stirrup? Will he fetch a thousand byzants' ransom?"
They brought the luckless prisoners into camp, and scarce knew what to do with them. Shock-headed, small-eyed fellows they were,—all bones, teeth, and sinew. None could speak their language. Raymond of Agiles, worthy chaplain, stood before them with a crucifix, and discoursed an hour long in Latin on the perilous state of their souls, hoping that some word of the truth might lodge in their hearts through a miracle of grace. But the wretches only blinked out of their little eyes, and never moved a muscle nor gave a sign on their stolid faces. Theroulde advised that, following Charlemagne's precept, they should be put to death.
"None of the Moslems did remain
But had turned Christian, or else was slain!"
prattled he, jauntily; but Sebastian counselled that due time for repentance should not be denied them. "Let them be as the men of Gibeon," he recommended, "hewers of wood and drawers of water." So the poor Turks were suffered to live, and Mary Kurkuas sent one of her maids to the tent where they lay bound, with cordials for such as were wounded. Many good Christians frowned at this, and Count Pons of Balazan hinted to Richard he would do well to rebuke his wife; "it was not seemly to have pity on God's enemies." But Richard belched out a great oath. "By St. Michael, who saveth from peril, he who bids me rebuke the Baroness de St. Julien shall walk up the length of Trenchefer!" and Count Pons, who was a discreet man, had to plead no desire for a quarrel, remembering the fate of the Valmonts.
Thus tamely the Holy War began; but on the sixth of May the army found itself under the walls of Nicæa—an infidel city now, but forever sacred to Christians, since here had been framed the great Creed. The knights laughed at sight of its lofty battlements, as promising doughty fighting, and sat down for the siege, awaiting the coming of Raymond from Constantinople. While the siege-engines made the firm rock quake with the attack, Richard and the other barons rode forth into the country seeking adventure; for Kilidge Arslan was sending down his light riders from the hills, and there was steady skirmishing. Each morning as Richard went abroad he looked back at the face of Mary—the lips smiling, but not the eyes; and each evening when Rollo lumbered wearily homeward—perhaps with his lord's target battered deeply—there would be laughter, kisses, and merry talk, as they sat before the camp-fire, saw the red flames weaving pictures, and Longsword told of the brave deeds of the day.
So sped two weeks around Nicæa, and on a Friday Richard sallied forth in company with Bohemond and Tancred, who led the scouting party. As their troops climbed the foothills that lay south of the city, the eagle eyes of Tancred lit upon three men who were stealing from grove to grove, as if wishing anything rather than to be seen. Then there was a headlong race among the knights to see which would strike first, and Rollo tossed out his great hoofs and led them all. Thus Richard caught the three just as they were plunging in a thicket, and bade them stand and yield. One indeed made a bold break for freedom, but just as he dashed among the trees, Tancred's javelin smote him, and his fellows held up their hands and howled for quarter. When the two were fairly on the way back to camp Richard observed that one was a Seljouk, but the other—a brown, black-eyed, wiry-limbed fellow—cried out in Arabic when addressed: "Ah, Christ be praised! I am amongst Christians; mercy, kind lord, on a fellow-believer,—release these bands!" "Christian?" protested Richard, still holding the cord knotted round the prisoner's hands.
"I call Our Lord to witness," exclaimed the captive, "I am a baptized Christian of Syria, and have endured captivity and persecution for the sake of the Gospel;" and at this he cast down his eyes and began to sigh.
"Our Lady pity you!" cried all the knights, touched to the quick instantly; "and how came you with these two infidels?"
"Ah! noble lords," declared the Arab, a great tear on each cheek, "I have been long captive among the unbelievers, the slave of Kilidge Arslan. Know that on Sunday the Sultan will fall upon you with all his host, and we three are messengers sent to bear the tidings into the city through your lines."
"Fellow! fellow!" began Tancred, pricking up his ears, "a Christian, and yet the private messenger of the infidels?"
"Yes, Cid," was the ready answer, "I have, alas!"—another great sigh—"been false to my faith and apostatized; yet I said in my heart, 'Let me go with these messengers, and by betraying them to the Franks, undo my own sin and gain liberty among Christian people.'"
"By St. Theodore," swore Tancred, "you speak smoothly; if it is as you say, you shall not go unrewarded, and Bishop Adhemar shall give you full absolution."
"Even so, Cid," replied the Arab, whose hands Richard had set at liberty, but who made no effort to fly. "Put to torture this Turk, my companion; he will confess all that I have told."
"You are a stout-limbed varlet," commented Bohemond, the sly-eyed Prince of Tarentum; "you shall serve with me in my suite as guide and interpreter, for language and country you must know well." But the Arab only bowed, and answered:—
"My lord is a fountain of generosity, yet it is my desire to seek service with the husband of that very noble lady the Princess Mary Kurkuas, who it is told is the great emir, Richard Longsword."
"St. Michael," burst out Richard, "I am he! Yet why do you call my wife by name?"
The stranger salaamed almost to the dust.
"God is gracious beyond my sins in granting so noble a lord as husband of the daughter of my dear master. Know that fifteen years past, before the Moslems took Antioch, I was house-servant to Manuel Kurkuas, 'domestic' of Syria. Oftentimes have I held the very august princess on my knee, and even in her childhood all declared she was of beauty passing St. Thecla."
Richard had only to hear one praise Mary Kurkuas to become that man's friend straightway. And he put his hand on the hilt of Trenchefer, taking oath upon the relics that if the stranger, who called himself Hossein, told an honest tale, he should never lack a patron. Only Tancred, viewing the Arab with his sea-green eyes, was heard to remark, "This fellow invokes the saints glibly, but his faith has more profession in it than is to my liking."
However, when they brought the two before Duke Godfrey and threatened the Turk with torture, he broke down and told the interpreter a tale exactly like Hossein's—that Kilidge Arslan waited in the mountains with a great host and would fall on the besiegers the next day. So the Arab's credit was high when Richard brought him to the tent of his wife. Hossein cast one glance upon her, and fell upon his knees, kissing her robe and crying:—
"Praises, praises to St. John of Damascus! I behold the daughter of my beloved lord Manuel, and God has verily clothed her as an angel of light!"
"Good man," said the Greek, a little confused, "I know you not. When have you served my father?"
"O preëminently august lady!" broke forth the Arab again. "Do you not remember Hossein, who was in the Cæsar Manuel's palace at Antioch? How he told you the tales of his people and sang you the wondrous song of Antar, and the stories of the jinns and the spirits of the air?"
"I was indeed in Antioch when my father ruled the city, but I was very young. I recall nothing," replied Mary.
"Alas! I had hopes your memory had not failed," declared Hossein, still kneeling; "yet it is true, O noblest of the Greeks, you were very young. Enough; my devotion can repay the daughter what I owe to the father. For the most excellent Cæsar saved me from cruel death at the hands of the infidels, my fellow-countrymen."
"You are an honorable man," said the lady, touched at his demonstration, "to discharge a debt incurred so long ago. Perhaps"—and she ran over all her early girlhood in her memory—"I recall something of you, yet my father had many servants. I crave pardon if I forget. And how have you fared all this while among the Turks?"
Whereupon Hossein flew into the most pitiful tale as to his life of captivity and persecution, so that the lady's eyes grew wet, and her heart right sore.
"Good Christian," said she, at last, "surely you have endured much for your faith. God grant that under like persecution I do not apostatize more deeply. And what may I do for you? Have you home, friends, kin?"
"Alas! most august princess, Heaven has taken all away. Let me be your slave, your bodyguard, and sleep without your tent by night with a naked sword. Perilous times await, and"—here he choked in his speech—"the foe shall only touch you by stepping across my poor body!"
"You are a noble and pious man," said Mary, smiling. "It shall be as you say. I will ask the Baron to make you my guardsman." Whereupon Hossein invoked all the saints of the calendar to witness his delight; and the princess had her varlets and maids clothe and feed him. When Herbert and Theroulde came to look at him, however, they wagged their heads; and Sylvana, the nurse, who went wherever her mistress went, came boldly to Mary, saying:—
"Save for his pious talk, we all swear this man is infidel. I knew all your father's servants at Antioch, and he was not of them."
But Mary answered her sharply:—
"Must one have a white skin to love Our Lord? No man could come before me with such a lie. Your memory fails you. The Cæsar had a great household. Besides, this Hossein has just revealed all the plots of Kilidge Arslan, and my husband says he is to be trusted." The word of Richard Longsword was not to be contradicted before his wife, as Sylvana knew well; so she held her peace. Only Theroulde arranged with Herbert that one of them should always watch their lady's tent along with the suspected Hossein.
But the Arab's revelations proved true to the letter. On the next day, while Raymond of Toulouse with the rear of the Provençals was making his way to camp, three huge bands of Seljouk cavalry swooped down on them and on the forces of Duke Godfrey. Then followed a battle of the true knightly sort, the Turks trying what they became too wise to attempt again,—to ride down the Franks in fair onset, with sheer weight of numbers. Long and fierce the struggle; every Christian chief proved a paladin. Generalship there was not; every baron and his knights fought his own little battle with the hordesmen confronting. Then in the end the surviving Seljouks were driven from the field like smoke; the heads of their fallen comrades slung into Nicæa by the engines, forewarning of what awaited the garrison. There were masses for the Christian dead, the first martyrs; Te Deums for the victory. Richard Longsword, men cried, had slain as many infidels as Duke Godfrey's self. When he stood in his bloody hauberk before Mary that night, she cast her arms about him and kissed him, saying: "O sweet lord, how beautiful you must be in battle! How God must rejoice in your holy service!"
"Dear life," answered Longsword, pressing her to his mailed breast, "it is when I think of the pure saint on earth who is praying for me that my arm grows strong."
"Then it must be very strong, Richard," said she, with half a laugh, half a sob, "for I love you more than words may tell; and my prayers are many and all for you."
So they were glad that evening,—at least all who had not lost a friend. But when Mary had gone to rest, Herbert talked gravely with Richard.
"Little lord," said he, affectionately, "put no trust in this Hossein. The saints are on his tongue, yet he stumbled when Sebastian tried to make him say the Creed, even in his own Arabic; and Theroulde swears that to-night when he thought none watched, he knelt toward Mecca in Moslem fashion, as if to pray, and muttered the incantations of their Al-Koran."
Richard laughed. "Theroulde smells danger at all times; and Sebastian thinks, to speak Arabic is to squint toward perdition. Hossein has revealed a secret which has given the infidels the mightiest stroke that was theirs since Charlemagne marched to Spain. And yet you accuse him of being one of them? Have shame for your suspicions on a persecuted fellow-Christian! Treat him as a brother, and pray that your own souls be in no greater peril than his."
"Nevertheless—" began Herbert.
"I hear no more," replied his master, abruptly; "I must go to rest. A cursed story told by Count Renard's jongleur runs in my head;—how Robert the Norman and his father, King William, once fought hand to hand, helmets closed, and Robert nigh killed his father ere they knew one another. St. Michael, what if Musa and I should meet thus! But I must sleep."
Herbert grumbled long to himself, and Theroulde and he renewed their vow never to leave Hossein a moment alone to work his own devices.