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 Provencal.

"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 the first moment, as he lifted himself up to look again at the first-born of his parents, the head of the brave troop of brethren, the gay, handsome, imperious young Lord de Montfort, whose proud head and gallant bearing he had looked at with a younger brother's imitative deference. What did he see but a wreck of a man, sitting crouched on the wretched bed, the left arm a mere stump, a bandage where the bright sarcastic eyes used to flash forth their dark fire, deep scars on all the small portion of the face that was visible through the over-grown masses of hair and beard, so plentifully sprinkled with white, that it would have seemed incredible that this man was but eight months older than the Prince, whose rival he had always been in personal beauty and activity. The beautiful child, clasped close to his breast, her face buried on his shoulder under his shaggy locks, was a strange contrast to his appearance, but only added to the look of piteous helplessness and desolation, as she hung upon him in her alarm at the agitation around her.

Richard had long been accustomed to think of his brother as dead; but such a spectacle as this was far more terrible to him, and his cheek blanched at the shock, as he gasped again, "Thou here, and thus! thou whom I thought slain!"

"Deem me so still," said his brother, "even as I deem the royal minion dead to me."

"Nay, Henry, thou knowst not."

"Who is present?" interrupted the blind man, raising his head and tossing back his hair with a gesture that for the first time gave Richard a sense that his eldest brother was indeed before him. "Methought I heard another voice."

"I am here, fair son," replied the old knight, "Father Robert of the Hospital! I will either leave thee, or keep thy secret as though it were thy shrift; but thou art sore spent, and mayst scarce talk more."

"Weariness and pain are past, Father, with my little one again in my bosom," said Henry; "and there are matters that must be spoken between me and this young brother of mine ere he quits this hut; and his voice resumed its old authoritative tone towards Richard. "Said you that he had saved my child?"

"He drew me from the river, Father," said Bessee looking up. "There was nothing to stand on, and it was so cold! And he took me in his arms and pulled me out, and put me in a boat; and the lady pulled off my blue coat, and put this one on me. Feel it, Father; oh, so pretty, so warm!"

"It was the Princess," said Richard; but Henry, not noticing, continued,

"Thou hast earned my pardon, Richard," and held out his remaining hand, somewhere towards the height where his brother's used to be.

Sir Robert smiled, saying, "Thou dost miscalculate thy brother's stature, son." And at the same moment Richard, who was now little short of his Cousin Edward in height, was kneeling by Henry, accepting and returning his embrace with agitation and gratitude, such as showed how their relative positions in the family still maintained their force; but Richard still asserted his independence so as to say, "When you have heard all, brother you will see that there is no need of pardoning me."

Henry, however, as perhaps Sir Robert had foreseen, instead of answering put his hand to his side, and sank back in a paroxysm of pain, ending in another swoon. The child stood by, quiet and frightened but too much used to similar occurrences to be as much terrified as was Richard, who thought his brother dying; but calling in the serving-brother, the old Hospitalier did all that was needed, and the blind man presently recovered and explained in a feeble voice that he had been jostled, thrown down, and trodden on, at the moment when he lost his hold of his little daughter; and this was evidently renewing his sufferings from the effect of an injury received in battle. "And what took thee there, son?" said Sir Robert, somewhat sharply.

"The harvest, Father," answered Henry, rousing himself to speak with a certain sarcasm in his tone. "It is the beggars' harvest wherever King Henry goes. We brethren of the wallet cannot afford to miss such windfalls."

"A beggar!" exclaimed Richard in horror.

"And what art thou?" retorted Henry, with a sudden fierceness.

"Listen, young men," said Sir Robert, "this I know, my patient there will soon be nothing if ye continue in this strain. A litter shall bring him to the infirmary."

"Nay," said Henry hastily, "not so, good Father. Here I abide, hap what may."

"And I abide with him," said Richard.

"Not so, I say," returned the Hospitalier, "unless thou wouldst slay him outright. Return to the Spital with me; and at morn, if he have recovered himself, unravel these riddles as thou and he will."

"It is well, Father," said Henry. "Go with him, Richard; but mark me. Be silent as the grave, and see me again."

And reluctant as he was, Richard was forced to comply.



CHAPTER VI—THE BEGGAR EARL



"Along with the nobles that fell at that tyde, His eldest son Henrye, who fought by his syde, Was felde by a blow he receivde in the fight; A blow that for ever deprivde him of sight." Old Beggar.

The chapel at the Spital was open to all who chose to attend. The deep choir was filled with the members of the Order, half a dozen knights in the stalls, and the novices and serving-brothers so ranged as to give full effect to the body of voice. Richard knelt on the stone floor outside the choir, intending after early mass to seek his brother; but to his surprise he found the blind man with his child at his feet in what was evidently his accustomed place, just within the door. His hair and beard were now arranged, his appearance was no longer squalid; but when he rose to depart, guided in part by the child, but also groping with a stick, he looked even more helpless than on his bed, and Richard sprang forward to proffer an arm for his support.

"Flemish cloth and frieze gown," said the object of his solicitude in a strange gibing voice; "court page and street beggar—how now, my master?"

"Lord Earl and elder brother," returned Richard, "thine is my service through life."

"Mine? Ho, ho! That much for thy service!" with a disdainful gesture of his fingers. "A strapping lad like thee would be the ruin of my trade. I might as well give up bag and staff at once."

"Nay, surely, wilt thou not?" exclaimed Richard in broken words from his extreme surprise. "The King and Prince only long to pardon and restore, and—"

"And thou wouldst well like to lord it at Kenilworth, earl in all but the name? Thou mayst do so yet without being cumbered with me or mine!"

"Thou dost me wrong, Henry," said Richard, much distressed. "I love the Prince, for none so truly honoured our blessed father as he, and for his sake he hath been most kind lord to me; but thou art the head of my house, my brother, and with all my heart do I long to render thee such service as—as may lighten these piteous sufferings."

"I believe thee, Richard; thou wert ever an honest simple-hearted lad," said Henry, in a different tone; "but the only service thou canst render me is to let me alone, and keep my secret. Here—I feel that we are at the stone bench, where I bask in the sun, and lay out my dish for the visitors of the gracious Order.—Here, Bessee, child, put the dish down," he added, retaining his hold of his brother, as if to feel whether Richard winced at this persistence in his strange profession. The little girl obeyed, and betook herself to the quiet sports of a lonely child, amusing herself with Leonillo, and sometimes returning to her father and obtaining his attention for a few moments, sometimes prattling to some passing brother of the Order, who perhaps made all the more of the pretty creature because this might be called an innocent breach of discipline. "And now, Master Page," said Henry in his tone of authority, yet with some sarcasm, "let us hear how long-legged Edward finished the work he had began on thee at Hereford—made thee captive in the battle, eh?"

Richard briefly narrated his life with Gourdon, and his capture by the Prince, adding, "My mother was willing I should remain with him; she bade me do anything rather than join Simon and Guy; and verily, brother, save that the Prince is less free of speech, his whole life seems moulded upon our blessed father's—"

"Speak not of them in the same breath," cried Henry hastily. "And wherefore—if such be his honour to him whom he slew and mutilated— art thou to disown thy name, and stand before him like some chance foundling?"

"That was the King's doing," said Richard. "The Prince was averse to it, but King Henry, though he wept over me and called me his dear nephew, made it his special desire that he might not hear the name of Montfort; and the Prince, though overruling him in all that pertains to matters of state, is most dutiful in all lesser matters. I hoped at least to be called Fitz Simon, but some mumble of the King turned it into Fowen, and so it has continued. I believe no one at court is really ignorant of my lineage; but among the people, Montfort is still a trumpet-call, and the King fears to hear it."

"Well he may!" laughed Henry. "Rememberest thou, Richard, the sorry figure our good uncle cut, when we armed him so courteously, and put him on his horse to meet the rebels at Evesham—how he durst not hang back, and loved still less to go onward, and kept calling me his loving nephew all the time?"

"Ah! Henry—but didst thou not hear my father mutter, when he saw the crowned helm under the standard, that it was ill done, and no good could come of seething the kid in the mother's milk? And verily, had not the Prince been carrying his father from the field, I trow the Mortimers had not refused us quarter, nor had their cruel will of us."

"Oh ho! thou art come to have opinions of thine own!" laughed Henry, with the scoff of a senior unable to brook that his younger brother should think for himself. Yet this tone was so familiar to Richard's ears, that it absolutely encouraged him to a nearer step to intimacy. He said, "But how scapedst thou, Henry? I could have sworn that I saw thee fall, skull and helmet cleft, a dead man!"

Instead of answering, Henry put his hand under the chin of his child, who was leaning against him, and holding up her face to his brother, said, "Thou canst see this child's face? Tell me what like she is."

"Like little Eleanor, like Amaury. The home-look of her eyes won my heart at once. Even the Princess remarked their resemblance to mine. Think of Eleanor and thy mind's eye will see her."

"No other likeness?" said the blind man wistfully; "but no—thou wast at Hereford when she was at Odiham."

"Who?"

He grasped Richard's hand, and under his breath uttered the name "Isabel."

"Isabel Mortimer!" exclaimed Richard, who had been, of course, aware of his brother's betrothal, when the two families of Montfort and Mortimer had been on friendly terms; "we heard she had taken the veil!"

"And so thou sawst me slain!" said Henry de Montfort dryly.

"But how—how was it?" asked Richard eagerly.

"Men sometimes tie knots faster than they intend," said Henry. "When Roger Mortimer took Simon's doings in wrath, and vowed that his sister should never wed a Montfort, he knew not what he did. He and his proud wife could flout and scorn my Isabel—they might not break her faith to me. Thou knowst, perhaps, Richard, since thou art hand and glove with our foes, that like a raven to the slaughter, the Lady Mortimer came as near the battle-field as her care for her dainty person would allow; and there was one whom she brought with her. And, gentle dame, what doth she do but carry her sister-in-law a sweet and womanly gift? What thinkst thou it was, Richard?"

"I fear I know," said Richard, choked; "my father's hand."

"Nay, that was a choicer morsel reserved for my lady countess herself. It was mine own, with our betrothal-ring thereon. Now, quoth that loving sister, might Isabel resume her ring. No plighted troth could be her excuse any longer for refusing to wed my Lord of Gloucester. Then rose up my love, 'It beckons me!' she said, and bade them leave it with her. They deemed that it was for death that it beckoned. So mayhap did she. I wot Countess Maud had little grieved. But little dreamed they of her true purpose—my perfect jewel of constant love—namely, to restore the lopped hand to the poor corpse, that it might likewise have Christian burial. Her old nurse, Welsh Winny, was as true to her as she was to me; and forth they sped, fearless of the spoilers, and made their way at nightfall even to the Abbey Church, where Edward, less savage than the fair countess, had caused us to be laid before the altar, awaiting our burial in the vaults."

"Thou wert senseless all this time?"

"Ay, and so continued. The pang when my hand was severed had roused me for a few moments, but only to darkness; and my effort to speak had been rewarded with as many Welsh knives as could pierce my flesh at once."

"And thou didst not bleed to death?"

"The swoon checked my blood. And the monks of Evesham must have staunched and bandaged so as to make a decent corpse of me. Had they had a man-at-arms among them, they would have known that mine were not the wounds of a dead but of a living man. The old nurse knew it, when my sweet lady would needs unbind my wrist, to place my hand in its right place. An old crone such as Welsh Winny never stirs without her cordial potion. They poured it into my lips—and if I were never more to awake to the light of day, I awoke to the sound that was yet dearer to me—while, alas! it still was left to me."

He became silent, till Richard's question drew him on.

"What with their care and support, when once on my feet I found strength to stumble out of the chapel and gain shelter in the woods ere day; and I believe the monks got credit for their zeal in casting out the excommunicate body."

"Not credit," said Richard; "the Prince was full of grief, more especially as they all disavowed the deed. But, brother, art thou excommunicate still?"

"Far from it, most pious Crusader. If seas of holy wells could assoil me, I should be pure enough. My sweet Isabel deemed that some such washing might bring back mine eyesight; and from one to another we wandered as my limbs could bear it. And at St. Winifred's there was a priest who told us strange tales of the miracles wrought in the Mortimer household by my father's severed hand; nay, that it had so worked on Lord Mortimer's sister, that she had left the vanities of the world, and gone into a nunnery. He seemed so convinced of my father's saintliness, and so honest a fellow, that Isabel insisted on unbosoming ourselves to him under seal of confession. No longer was the old nurse to be my mother and she my sister; and the good man made no difficulties, but absolved me, and wedded me to the truest, most loving wife that ever blessed a man bereft of all else."

"And you begged! O Henry, the noble lady—"

"At first we had the knightly chain and spurs in which the monks had kindly pranked me up. Isabel too had worn a few jewels; but after all, a palmer need never hunger. My father always said no trade was so well paid as begging, under King Henry, and verily we found it so. She used at times to gather berries and thread them for chaplets to sell at the holy wells; but I trow sheer beggary throve better!"

"But wherefore? Even had pardon not been ready, Simon held out Kenilworth for months."

Henry laughed his dry laugh.

"Simple boy, dost think I would trust Simon with an elder brother whose hand could no longer keep his head?"

"And my mother—"

"She had always hated the Mortimers, even when the contract was matter of policy. Would I have taken my sweet Isabel to abide her royal scorn, it might be incredulity of our marriage? Though for that matter it is more unimpeachable than her own! Nay, nay, out of ken and out of reach was our only security from our kin on either side, unless we desired that my head should follow my hand as a dainty dish for Countess Maud."

"How could the lady brook it?"

"She dyed her fair skin with walnut, wore russet gown and hood, and was a very nightingale for blitheness and sweet song through that first year," said Henry; "blither than ever when that little one was born in the sunshiny days of Whitsuntide. I tell thee, those were happier days than ever I passed as Lord de Montfort at Kenilworth. But after that, the bruised hurt in my side, which had never healed when the cleaner gashes did, became more painful and troublesome. Holy wells did nothing for it; and she wasted with watching it, as though my pain had been hers. Naught would serve her but coming here, because she had been told that the Knights of St. John had better experience of old battle-wounds than any men in the realm. Much ado had we to get here—the young babe in her arms, and I well- nigh distraught with pain. We crept into this same hut, and I had a weary sickness throughout the winter—living, I know not how, by the bounty of the Spital, and by the works of her fingers, which Winny would take out to sell on feast-days in the city. Oh that eyes had been left me to note how she pined away! but I had scarce felt how thin and bony were her tender fingers ere the blasts of the cruel March wind finished the work."

"Alack! alack! poor Henry," said Richard; "never, never was lady of romaunt so noble, and so true!"

"No more," said Henry hastily, leaning his brow on the top of his staff. "Come hither, Bessee," he added after a brief pause; "say thy prayer for thy blessed mother, child."

And holding out his one hand, he inclosed her two clasped ones within it, as the little voice ran over an utterly unintelligible form of childishly clipped Latin, sounding, however, sweet and birdlike from the very liberties the little memory had taken in twisting its mellifluous words into a rhythm of her own. And there was catchword enough for Richard to recognize and follow it, with bonnet doffed, and crossing himself.

"And now," he said, "surely the need for secrecy is ended. The land is tranquil, the King ruled by the Prince, the Prince owning all the past folly and want of faith that goaded our father into resistance. Wherefore not seek his willing favour? Thou art ever a pilgrim. Be with us in the crusade. Who knows what the Jordan waves may effect for thee?"

"No, no," grimly laughed Henry. "Dost think any favour would make it tolerable to be wept over and pitied by the King—pitied by THE KING," he repeated in ineffable disgust; "or to be the show of the court, among all that knew me of old, when I WAS a man? Hob the cobbler, and Martin the bagster, are better company than Pembroke and Gloucester, and I meet with more humours on Cheapside than I should at Winchester—more regard too. Why, they deem me threescore years old at least, and I am a very oracle of wisdom among them. Earl of Leicester, forsooth! he would be nobody compared with Blind Hal! And as to freedom—with child and staff the whole country and city are before me—no shouts to dull retainers, and jackanape pages to set my blind lordship on horseback, without his bridle hand, and lead him at their will anywhere but at his own.

"All this I can understand for thyself," said Richard; "but for thy child's sake canst thou not be moved?"

"My child, quotha? What, when her Uncle Simon is true grandson to King John?"

Richard started. "I cannot believe what thou sayest of Simon," he answered in displeasure.

"One day thou wilt," calmly answered Henry; "but I had rather not have it proved upon the heiress of Leicester and Montfort."

"Leicester is forfeit—Simon an outlawed man."

"If the humour for pardon is set in, Cousin Edward is no man to do things by halves. If he owned me at all, the lands would be mine again, and such a bait would be smelt out by Simon were he at the ends of the earth. Or if not, that poor child would be granted to any needy kinsman or grasping baron that Edward wanted to portion. My child shall be my own, and none other's. Better a beggar's brat than an earl's heiress!"

"She is a lovely little maiden. I know not how thou canst endure letting her grow up in poverty, an alien from her birth and rank."

"Poverty," Henry laughed. "Little knowest thou of the jolly beggar's business! I would fain wager thee, Richard, that pretty Bessee's marriage-portion shall be a heavier bag of gold than the Lady Elizabeth de Montfort would gather by all the aids due to her father from his vassals—and won moreover without curses."

"But who would be the bridegroom?"

"Her own choice, not the King's," answered Henry briefly.

"And this is all," said Richard, perceiving that according to the previous day's agreement the cream-coloured elephant of a German horse was being led forth for his use, and Sir Robert preparing to accompany him. "I must leave thee in this strange condition?"

"Ay, that must thou. Betray me, and thou shalt have the curse of the head of thine house. Had thy voice not become so strangely like my father's, I had never made myself known to thee."

"I will see thee again."

"That will be as thou canst. I trow Edward hardly gives freedom enough to his pages for them to pay visits unknown," replied Henry, with a strange sneering triumph in his own wild liberty.

"If aught ails thee, if I can aid thee, swear to me that thou wilt send to me."

Henry laughed with somewhat of a tone of mockery, adding, "Well, well—keep thou thy plight to me so long as I want thee not, and I will keep mine to thee if ever I should need thee. Now away with thee. I hear the horses impatient for thee; and what would be the lot of the beggar if he were seen chattering longer with a lordly young page than might suffice for his plaint? I hear voices. Put a tester in my dish, fair Sir, for appearance' sake. Thou hast it not? aha—I told thee I was the richer as well as the freer man. What's that? That is no ring of coin."

"'Tis a fair jewel, father, green and sparkling," cried Bessee.

"Nay, nay, I'll have none of it. Some token from thy new masters? Ha, boy?"

"From the Princess, on New Year's Day," replied Richard. "But keep it, oh, keep it, Henry; it breaks my heart to leave thee thus."

"Keep it! Not I. What wouldst say to thy dainty dame? Nor should I get half its value from the Jews. No, no, take back thy jewel, Sir Page; I'll not put thee in need of telling more lies than becomes thine office."

Richard glowed with irritation; but what was the use of anger with a blind beggar? And while Henry bestowed far more demonstration of affection on Leonillo than on his brother, it became needful to mount and ride off, resolving to tell the Prince and Princess, what would be no falsehood, that the child belonged to a Kenilworth man-at-arms, sorely wounded at Evesham, and at present befriended by the Knights of St. John.

Old Sir Robert Darcy knew so much that it was needful to confide fully in him; and he gave Richard some satisfaction by a promise to watch over his brother as far as was possible with a man of such uncertain vagrant habits; and he likewise engaged to let him know, even in the Holy Land, of any change in the beggar's condition; and this, considering the wide-spread connections of the Order, and that some of its members were sure to be in any crusading army, was all that Richard could reasonably hope.

"Canst write?" asked Sir Robert.

"Yea, Father."

"I could once! But if there be need to send thee a scroll, I'll take care it is writ by a trusty hand."

More than this Richard could not hope. There had always been a strange self-willed wildness of character about his eldest brother, who, though far less violent and overbearing in actual deed than the two next in age, Simon and Guy, had contrived to incur even greater odium than they, by his mocking careless manner and love of taunts and gibing. Simon de Montfort the elder had indeed strangely failed in the bringing up of his sons. Whether it were that their royal connection had inflated them with pride, or that the King's indulgence had counteracted the good effects of the admirable education provided for them at home, they had done little justice to their parentage, or to their tutor, the excellent Robert Grostete. Perhaps the Earl himself was too affectionate: perhaps his occupation in public affairs hindered him from enforcing family discipline. At any rate, neither of the elder three could have been naturally endowed with his largeness of mind, and high unselfish views. He was a man before his age; not only deeply pious, but with a devoted feeling for justice and mercy carried into all the details of life, till his loyalty to the law overcame his loyalty to the King. Simon and Guy, on the other hand, were commonplace young nobles of the thirteenth century, heedless of all but themselves, and disdaining all beneath them; and when their father had seized the reins of government in order to enforce the laws that the King would not observe, they saw in his elevation a means of gratifying themselves, and being above all law. The cry throughout England had been that Simon's "sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not."

Henry de Montfort had not indeed, like his brothers, plundered the ships in the Channel, extorted money from peaceful yeomen, nor insulted the poor old captive King to his face; but his deference had been more galling than their defiance; his scornful smiles and keen cutting jests had mortally offended many a partizan; and when positive work was to be done, Simon with all his fierceness and cruelty was far more to be depended on than Henry, who might at any time fly off upon some incalculable freak. To Richard's boyish recollection, if Simon had been the most tyrannical towards him in deed, Henry had been infinitely more annoying and provoking in the lesser arts of teasing.

And looking back on the past, he could understand how intolerable a life of helplessness would be among the equals whom Henry had so often stung with his keen wit, and that to a man of his peculiar tone of mind there was infinitely more liberty in thus sinking to the lowest depths, where his infirmities were absolute capital to him, than in being hedged about with the restraints of his rank. Any way, it was impossible to interfere, even for the child's sake, and all Richard could do to console himself was to look forward to his return from the Crusade an esquire or even a knight, with exploits that Henry might respect—a standing in the Court that would give him some right to speak—perhaps in time a home and lady wife to whom his brother would intrust his child, who would then be growing out of a mere toy. Or might not his services win him a fresh grant of the earldom, and could he not then prove his sincerity by laying it at the true Earl's feet?

Pretty Bessee, too! Richard remembered stories current in the family, of their grandmother, Amicia, Countess of Leicester in her own right, being forced when a young girl to wed the stern grim old persecuting Simon de Montfort, and how vain had been her struggles against her doom. He lost himself in graceful romantic visions of the young knight whose love he would watch and foster, and whose marriage to his lovely niece should be securely concluded ere her rank should be made known, when her guardian uncle would yield all to her. And from that day forth Richard looked out with keen eyes among the playfellows of the little princes for Bessee's future knight.



CHAPTER VII—AMONG THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE



"But man is more than law, and I may have Some impress of myself upon the world; One poor brief life, helping to feed the flame Of chivalry, and keep alive the truth That courage, honour, mercy, make a knight." Queen Isabel, by S. M.

"Land in sight! Cheer up, John, my man!" said Richard, leaning over a bundle of cloaks that lay on the deck of a Genoese galley.

The cross floated high aloft, accompanied by the lions of English royalty; the bulwark was hung round with blazoned shields, and the graceful white sails were filled by a gay breeze that sent the good ship dancing over the crested waves of the Mediterranean, in company with many another of her gallant sisters, crowded with the chivalry of England.

Woeful was however the plight of great part of that chivalry. Merrily merrily bounded the bark, but her sport felt very like death to many of her freight, and among others to poor little John de Mohun.

His father, Baron Mohun of Dunster, had been deeply implicated in the Barons' Wars, and had been a personal friend of the Earl of Leicester, from whom he had only separated himself in consequence of the outrageous exactions and acts of insolence perpetrated by the young Montforts. He had indeed received a disabling wound while fighting on the Prince's side at Evesham; but his submission had been thought so insecure that his son and heir had been required of him, ostensibly as page, but really as hostage.

In spite of his Norman surname, little John of Dunster was, at twelve years old, a sturdy thoroughgoing English lad, with the strongest possible hatred to all foreigners, whom with grand indifference to natural history he termed "locusts sucking the blood of Englishmen." Not a word or command would he understand except in his mother tongue; and no blows nor reproofs had sufficed to tame his sturdy obstinacy. The other pages had teased, fagged, and bullied him to their hearts' content, without disturbing his determination to go his own way; and his only friend and protector had been Richard, whom, under the name of Fowen, he took for a genuine Englishman, and loved with all his heart. If anything would ever cure him of his wilful awkwardness and dogged bashfulness, it was likely to be the kindness of Richard—above all, in the absence of the tormentors, for Hamlyn de Valence alone of the other pages had been selected to attend upon the Prince in this expedition; and he, though scornful and peremptory, did not think the boy worthy of his attention, and did not actively tease him.

At present Hamlyn de Valence, as well as most others of the passengers, lay prostrate; scarcely alive even to the assurance of Richard, who had still kept his feet, that the outline of the hills was quickly becoming distinct, and that they were fast entering the gulf where lay the fleet that had brought the crusaders of France and Sicily, whom they hoped to join in the conquest and conversion of Tunis. On arriving at Aigues Mortes, they had found that the French King had already sailed for Sicily; and following him thither, learnt that his brother, Charles of Anjou, had persuaded him to begin his crusade by a descent on Tunis, to which the Sicilian crown was said to have some claim; that he had sailed thither at once, and Charles had followed him so soon as the Genoese transports could return for the Sicilian troops.

"I see the masts!" exclaimed Richard; "the bay is crowded with them! There must be a goodly force. Yonder are two headlands; within them we shall have smoother water—see—"

"What strikes thee so suddenly silent?" growled one of the muffled figures stretched on deck.

"The ensigns are but half-mast high, my Lord," returned Richard in an awe-struck voice; "the lilies of France are hung drooping downward."

"These plaguy southern winds at their tricks," muttered at first Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, for he it was who had spoken, though Richard had not known him to be so near; then sitting up, he came to a fuller view: "Hm—it looks ill! Thou canst keep thy feet, Fowen, or what do they call thee? Down with thee to the cabin, and let the Prince know."

Stepping across the prostrate forms, and meeting with vituperations as he trode, Richard made his way to the ladder that led below, and notified his presence behind the curtain that veiled the royal cabin. He was summoned to enter at once. The Prince was endeavouring to write at a swinging-table, the Princess lay white and resigned on a couch, attended on by Dame Idonea (or more properly Iduna) Osbright, a lady who had lost her husband in a former Crusade, and had ever since been a sort of high-born head nurse in the palace. A Danish skald, who had once been at the English court, had said that she seemed to have eaten her namesake's apple of immortality, without her apple of beauty, for no one could ever remember to have seen her other than a tiny dried-up old witch, with keen gray eyes, a sharp tongue, an ever ready foot and hand, and a frame utterly unaffected by any of the influences so sinister to far younger and stronger ones. Devoted to all the royal family, her special passion was for Prince Edmund, who, in his mother's repugnance to his deformity, had been left almost entirely to her, and she had accompanied the Princess Eleanor all the more willingly from her desire to look after her favourite nursling.

"There, Lady," said Edward to his wife, "the tossing is all but over; here is Richard come to tell us that we are nigh on land."

"Even so, my Lord," returned Richard; "we are entering the gulf, but my Lord of Gloucester has sent me to report to you that in all the ships the colours are trailing."

"Sayst thou?" exclaimed the Prince, hastily laying aside his writing materials. "Fear not, mi Dona, I will return anon and tell thee how it is. We are in smoother water already."

"So much smoother that I will come with thee out of this stifling cabin," said Eleanor. "O would that we had been in time for thee to have counselled thine uncles—"

"We will see what we have to grieve for ere we bemoan ourselves," said the Prince. "My good uncle of France would put his whole fleet in mourning for one barefooted friar!"

"Depend on it, my Lord, 'tis mourning for something in earnest," interposed Dame Iduna; "I said it was not for nothing that a single pyot came and rocked up his ill-omened tail while we were taking horse for this expedition, and my Lady there was kissing the little ones at home, nor that a hare ran over our road at Bagshot—"

"Well, Dame," interposed the Prince good-humouredly, seeing his wife somewhat affected by the list of omens, "I know you have a horse-shoe in your luggage, so you will come safe off, whoever does not!"

"And what matters what my luck is," returned the Dame, "an old beldame such as me, so long as you and your brother come off safe, and find the blessed princes at home well and sound? Would that we were out of this sandy hole, or that any one would resolve me why we cannot go straight to Jerusalem when we are about it!"

The Dame had delayed them while she spoke, in order to adjust the Princess's muffler over her somewhat dishevelled locks; but Eleanor seeing that her husband was impatient, put a speedy end to her operations, and took his arm.

Meantime the vessel had come within the Gulf of Goletta, and others of the passengers had revived, and were standing on deck to watch their entrance into the very harbour that two thousand years before had sheltered the storm-tossed fleet of AEneas; but if the Trojan had there found a wooded haven, the groves and sylvan shades must long since have been destroyed, for to the new-comers the bay appeared inclosed by spits of sand, though there was a rising ground in front that cut off the view. In the centre of the bay was a low sandy islet, covered with remains of masonry, and with a fort in the midst. On this was mounted the French banner, but likewise drooping; and all around it lay the ships with furled sails and trailing ensigns, giving them an inexpressibly mysterious look of woe, like living creatures with folded wings and vailed crests, lying on the face of the waters in a silent sleep of sorrow. There was an awe of suspense that kept each one on the deck silent, unable to utter the conjecture that weighed upon his breast.

A boat was already putting off, and its quick movements seemed to mar the solemn stillness, as, impelled by the regular strokes of a dozen dark handsome Genoese mariners with gaily-tinted caps, it shot towards the vessel. A Genoese captain in graver garb sat at the helm, and as they came alongside, a whisper, almost a shudder, seemed to thrill upwards from the boat to the crew, and through them to the passengers, "Il Re!" "il Re santo," "il Re di Francia." It seemed to have pervaded the whole ship even before the Genoese had had time to take the rope flung to him and to climb up the ship's side, where as his fellow-captain greeted him, he asked hastily for the Principe Inglese.

For Edward had not come forward, but was standing with his back against the mainmast, with colourless cheek and eyes set and fixed. Eleanor looked up to him in silence, aware that he was mastering vehement agitation, and would endure no token of sympathy or sorrow that would unnerve him when dignity required firmness. To him, Louis IX., the husband of his mother's sister, had been the guiding friend and noble pattern denied to him in his father; and Eleanor, intrusted to his uncle's care during the troubles of England, a maiden wife in her first years of womanhood, had been formed and moulded by that holy and upright influence. To both the loss was as that of a father; and the murmur among the sailors was to them as a voice saying, "Knowest thou that God will take away thy master from thy head to-day?" For the moment, however, the Princess's sole thought was how her husband would bear it, and she watched anxiously till the struggle was over, in the space of a few seconds, and he met the Genoese with his usual reserved courtesy; and returning his salutation, signed to him to communicate his tidings.

They were however brief, for the captain had held by his ship, and all he knew was that deadly sickness, fever, and plague had raged in the camp. The Papal Legate was dead, and the good King of France. His son was dead too, and many another beside.

"Which son?"

"Not the eldest—he lay sick, but there were hopes of him; but the little one—he had been carried on board his ship, but it had not saved him."

"Poor little Tristan!" sighed Eleanor; "true Cross-bearer, born in one hapless Crusade to die in another."

"The King of Sicily?" demanded Edward between his teeth.

"He had arrived the very day of his brother's death," said the Genoese; "and when he had seen how matters stood, he had concluded a truce with the King of Tunis, and intended to sail as soon as the new King of France could bear to be moved."

In the meantime the vessel had been anchored, and preparations were made for landing; but the Princes impatience to hear details would not brook even the delay of waiting till his horse could be set ashore. He committed to the Earl of Gloucester the charge of encamping his men on the island, left a message with him for his brother Edmund, who was in another ship, and perceiving that Richard had suffered the least of all his suite, summoned him to attend him in the boat which was at once lowered.

This would have been a welcome call had not Richard found that poor little John de Mohun had not revived like the other passengers, but still lay inert and sometimes moaning. All Richard could do was to beg the groom specially attached to the pages' service, to have a care of the little fellow, and get him sheltered in a tent as soon as possible; but the Prince never suffered any hesitation in obeying him, and it was needful to hurry at once into the boat.

Without a word, the Prince with long swift strides, in the light of the sinking sun, walked up the low hill, the same where erst the pious AEneas climbed with his faithful Achates following. From the brow the Trojan prince had beheld the rising city in the valley—the English prince came on its desolation. Yet nature had made the vale lovely—green with well-watered verdure, fields of beauteous green maize, graceful date palms, and majestic cork trees; and among them were white flat-roofed Moorish houses; but many a black stain on the fair landscape told of the fresh havoc of an invading army.

Utterly blotted out was Carthage. Half demolished, half choked with sand, the city of Dido, the city of Hannibal, the city of Cyprian— all had vanished alike, and nothing remained erect but a Moorish fortress, built up with fragments of the huge stones of the old Phoenicians, intermixed with the friezes and sculptures of Graecising Rome, and the whole fabric in the graceful Saracenic taste; while completing the strange mixture of periods, another of those mournful French banners drooped from the battlements, and around it spread the white tents of the armies of France and the Two Sicilies, like it with trailing banners; an orphaned plague-stricken host in a ruined city.

While the Prince paused for a moment's glance, a party of knights came spurring up the hill, who had been ordered off to meet him on the first intelligence that his fleet was in sight, but had been taken by surprise by his alertness.

They met with bowed heads and dejected mien; and there was one who hid his face and wept aloud as he exclaimed, "Ah! Messire, our holy King loved you well!"

"Alas, beau sire Guillaume de Porceles!" was all that Edward could say, as with tears in his eyes he held out his hand to the good Provencal knight, adding, "Let me hear!"

The knight, leading his horse and walking by Edward's side, told how the King had been induced to make his descent on Tunis, from some wild hope of the king's conversion, which had been magnified by Charles of Anjou, from his dislike to let so gallant an army pass by without endeavouring to obtain some personal advantage to his own realm of Sicily. Though a vassal of Beatrix of Provence, the Sire de Porceles was no devoted admirer of her husband, Charles of Anjou, and spoke with no concealment of the unhappy perversion of the Crusade. Charles of Anjou was all-powerful with the court of Rome, and in crusading matters Louis deemed it right absolutely to surrender to the ecclesiastical power all that judgment which had made him so prudent and wise a king at home, while his crusades were lamentable failures. Thus in him it had been a piece of obedient self-denial not to press forward to the Holy Sepulchre; but to land in this malarious bay to fulfil aims that, had he but used his common sense, he would have seen to be merely those of private ambition. There it had been one scene of wasting sickness. A few deeds of arms had been done to refresh the spirits of the French, such as the taking of the fort of Carthage, and now and then a skirmish of some foraging party; but in general the Moors launched their spears and fled without staying for combat. Many who had hid themselves in the vaults and cellars of Carthage had been dragged out and put to death, and their bodies had aided in breeding pestilence. Name after name fell from the lips of the knight, like the roll of warriors fallen in a great battle, when

"They melted from the field like snow, Their king, their lords, their mightiest low."

And the last foreign embassy that ever reached Louis IX. had been that of the Greek Emperor Michael Palaeologos, come to set before him the savage barbarities perpetrated upon Christians by this brother -

"Who had spoilt the purpose of his life."

It was as Charles entered the port, that Louis, lying on a bed of ashes, with his hands crossed upon his breast, and the words, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" entered not the Jerusalem of his earthly schemes, but the Jerusalem of his true aspirations.

"Shall we conduct you to my Lord the King of Sicily?" asked De Porceles.

"No!" said Edward, with bitter sternness; "to my uncle of France."

"Down, down, my Lord, and all of you instantly," shouted Porceles suddenly, throwing himself face downwards on the ground. Edward was too good a soldier not to follow the injunction instantaneously, and Richard did the same, as well as all the knights who had come up with Porceles. Even the horses buried their noses in the hot sandy soil. A strange rushing roaring sound passed over them; there was a sense of intense suffocation, then of heat, pricking, and irritation. The Provencals were rising; and the Prince and his page doing the same, shook off a plentiful load of sand, and beheld, careering furiously away, between them and the western sun, what looked like a purple column, reaching from earth to heaven, and bespangled with living gold-dust, whirling round in giddy spirals, and all the time fleeting so fast that it was diminishing every moment, and was gone in a wink of the eye.

"Is it enchantment?" gasped Richard to the squire nearest him, as he strove to clear his eyes from the sand and gaze after the wonder.

"Worse than enchantment," quoth the squire; "it is a sand whirlwind."

They were soon crossing the ditch that had been dug around the camp among the ruins, and passed through lanes of tents erected among the thick foliage that mantled the broken walls; here and there tracks of mosaic pavement; of temples to Dido or Anna peeping forth beneath either the luxuriant vegetation or the heavy sand-drifts; or columns of the new Carthage lying veiled by acanthus; or remnants of churches destroyed by Genseric—all alike disregarded by the sickly drooping figures that moved feebly about among them, regarding them as little save stumbling-blocks.

A Moorish house in the midst of a once well-laid-out garden, now trampled and destroyed, was the place to which the Provencal knight led the English Prince. Entering the doorway of a court, where a fountain sparkled in the midst of a marble pavement, they saw the richly-latticed stone doorway of the house guarded by two figures in armour like iron statues; and passing between them, they came into the principal chamber, marble-floored, and with a divan of cushions round it; but full in the midst of the room lay a coffin, covered with the lilied banner, and the standard of the Cross; the crowned helmet, good sword, knightly spurs, and cross-marked shield lying upon it; solemn forms in armour guarded it, and priests knelt and chanted prayers and psalms around it. Within were only the bones of Louis, which were to be taken to St. Denis. The flesh, which had been removed by being boiled in wine and spices, was already on its way to Palermo in a vessel whose melancholy ensigns would have announced the loss to the English had they not passed it in the night.

Long did Edward kneel beside the remains of his uncle, with his face hidden and thoughts beyond our power to trace. Richard's heart was full of that strange question "Wherefore?" Wherefore should the best and purest schemes planned by the highest souls fall over like a crested wave and become lost? So it had been, he would have said, with the Round Table under Arthur, so with England's rights beneath his own noble father, so with the Crusade under such leaders as Edward of England and Louis of France. Did he mark the answer in those Psalms that the priests were singing around -

"Qui seminant in lacrymis, in exultatione metent, Euntes ibant et flebant mittentes semina sua, Venientes autem venient cum exultatione portantes manipulos suos." {1}

Surely we may believe that Simon of Leicester and Louis of France were alike beyond grief at their marred visions, their errors of deed or of judgment were washed away, and their true purpose was accepted, both waiting the harvest when their works should follow them, and it should have been made manifest that the effect of what they had been and had suffered had told far more on future generations than what they had wrought out in their own lifetime.

It was at that moment that the sensation that an eye was upon him caused Richard to raise his eyes from the floor. One of the armed figures, who had hitherto stood as still as suits of armour in a castle hall, had partially lowered the visor of the helmet, and eyes, nose, and a part of the cheeks were visible. Richard looked up, and they were those of his father! was it a delusion of his fancy? He closed his eyes and looked again. Again it was the deep brown Montfort eye, the clearly-cut nose, the embrowned skin! He glanced at the bearings on the shield. Behold, it was his own—the red field and white lion rampant with a forked tail, which he had not seen for so long.

Almost at the same moment another person entered the chamber—a man with a sallow complexion, narrow French features, sharp gray eyes, and a certain royal bearing that even a cunning shrewdness of expression could not destroy. His face was composed to a look of melancholy, and he crossed himself and knelt down near Edward to await the conclusion of his devotions. Edward, who knelt absorbed in grief, with his cloak partly over his face, apparently did not perceive him, and after two or three unheeded endeavours at attracting notice, he at length rose and said in a low voice, "My fair nephew." For a moment the Prince lifted up his face, and Richard had rather have died than have encountered that glance of mournful reproof; then hiding his face in his hands again, he continued his devotions.

When these were ended he rose from his knees; and when out of the death-chamber bowed his bead and with grave courtesy exchanged greetings with Charles of Anjou, asking at the same time to see his young cousin Philippe, the new King of France.

An inquiry from an attendant elicited that Philippe had just dropped asleep under the influence of a potion from his leech.

"Then, fair nephew," said Charles of Sicily, "be content with your old uncle, and come to my apartments, where I will set before you the necessities that have led me to conclude the truce that is baffling your eager desire of deeds of arms."

"Pardon me, royal uncle," returned Edward, "I must see my camp set up. It is already late, and I must take order that my troops mingle not where contagion might seize them. Another time," he added, "I may brook the argument better."

Charles of Anjou did not press him further. There was that in his face and voice which betokened that his fierce indignation and overpowering grief were scarcely restrained, and that a word of excuse in his present mood would but have roused the lion.

Horses had been provided for him and his attendant. He flung himself on his steed at once, and Richard was obliged to follow without a moment's opportunity of making inquiry about the wonderful apparition he had seen in the chamber of death.

For some distance Edward galloped rapidly over the sandy soil, then drawing up his horse when he had come to the brow from which he could see on the one side the valley of Carthage, on the other the bay, he made an exclamation which Richard took for a summons, and he came up asking if he were called. "No, boy, no! I only spoke my thoughts aloud! Failure and success! We've seen them both to-day—in the two kings! What thinkst thou of them?"

"Better be wrecked than work the wreck, my Lord," said Richard.

"Ay! but why surrender the wit to the worker of the wreck?" said Edward. Then knitting his brow, "Two holy men have I known who did not blind their wit for their conscience' sake—two alone—did it fare better with them? One was the good Bishop of Lincoln—the other thou knowst, Richard! Well, one goes after another—first good Bishop Grostete, then the Lord of Leicester, and now mine uncle of France; and if earth is to have no better than such as it pleases the Saints to leave in it, it will not be worth staying in much longer."

"My Lord," said Richard, coming near, "methought I saw my father's face under a visor—one of the knightly guards beside the holy King."

"Well might thy fancy call him up in such a presence," said Edward. "They twain had hearts in the same place above, though they saw the world below on different sides, and knew each other little, and loved each other less, in life. That's all at an end now! Well, back to our camp to make the best of the world they have left behind them!" And then in a tone that Richard was not meant to hear, "While mi dona Leonor remains to me there is something saintly and softening still in this world! Heaven help me—ay, and all my foes—were she gone from it too!"



CHAPTER VIII—RICHARD'S WRAITH



"No distance breaks the tie of blood; Brothers are brothers evermore; Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood, That magic may o'erpower."—Christian Year.

It was nearly dark when the Prince and the Page landed on the island, and found the tents already set up in their due order and rank, according to the discipline that no one durst transgress where Edward was the commander.

Richard attended him to his pavilion, and being there dismissed until supper-time, crossed the square space which was always left around the royal banner, to the tent at the southern corner, which was regularly appropriated to the pages' use. On lifting its curtain he was, however, dismayed to see a kirtle there, and imagining that he must have fallen upon the ladies' quarters, he was retreating with an apology; when the sharp voice of Dame Idonea called out, "Oh yes, Master Page! 'tis you that are at home here. I was merely tarrying till 'twas the will of one of you to come in and look to the poor child."

And little John of Dunster called from a couch of mantles, "Richard, oh! is it he at last?"

"It is I," said Richard, advancing into the light of a brass lamp, hung by chains from the top of the tent. "This is kind indeed, Lady! But is he indeed so ill at ease?"

"How should he be otherwise, with none of you idle-pated pages casting a thought to him?"

"I was grieved to leave him—but the Prince summoned me," began Richard.

"Beshrew thee! Tell me not of princes, as though there were no one whom thou couldst bid to have a care of the little lad!"

"I did bid Piers—," Richard made another attempt.

"Piers, quotha? Why didst not bid the Jackanapes that sits on the luggage? A proper warder for a sick babe!"

"I am no babe!" here burst out John; "I am twelve years old come Martinmas, and I need no tendance but Richard's."

"Ha, ha! So those are all the thanks we ladies get, when we are not young and fair!" laughed Dame Idonea, rather amused.

"I want no women, young or old," petulantly repeated John; "I want Richard.—Lift me up, Richard; take away this cloak."

"For his life, no!" returned the Dame; "he has the heats and the chills on him, and to let him take cold would be mere slaughter."

"Alas!" said Richard, "I hoped nothing ailed him but the sea, and that landing would make all well."

"As if the sea ever made a child shiver and burn by turns! Nay, 'tis the trick of the sun in these parts. Strange that the sun himself should be a mere ally of the Infidel! I tell thee, if the child is ever to see Dunster again, thou must watch him well, keep him from the sun by day and the chill by night; or he'll be like the poor creatures in the French camp out there, whom, I suppose, you found in fine case."

"Alack yes, Lady!"

"I've seen it many a time; and all their disorders will be creeping into our camp next. Tell me, is it even as they told us, one king dead and the other dying?"

Richard began to wonder whether he should ever get her out of his tent, for she insisted on his telling her every possible particular— who had died, who had lived, who was sick, who well; and as from the close connection between the English, French, and Sicilian courts, whose queens were all sisters, she knew who every one was, and accounted for the history of each person she inquired after, back to the last generation—happy if it were not to the third—her conversation was not quickly over. She ended at last, by desiring Richard to give her patient some of a febrifuge, which she had brought with her, every two hours, and when it was all spent, or in case of any change in the boy's state, to summon her from the ladies' tent; adding, however, "But what's the use of leaving a pert springald like thee in charge? Thou wilt sleep like a very dormouse, I'll warrant! I'd best call Mother Jugge."

"Oh no, no!" cried John; to whom the attendance of Mother Jugge would have been a worse indignity than the being nursed by Dame Idonea; "let me have no one but Richard! Richard knows all I want.—Richard, leave me not again."

"Ay, ay; a little lad ever hangs to a bigger, were he to torture the life out of him. Small thanks for us women after our good looks be past. But I'll look in on the child in early morn, thanks or no thanks; for I know his mother well, and if I can help it, the hyenas shall not make game of his bones, as I hear them doing by the French yonder."

John strove to say that, indeed, he thanked her, and had been infinitely comforted and refreshed by her care, and that all he meant was to express his distaste to Mother Jugge, the lavender (i.e. laundress), and his desire for Richard Fowen's company; but he was little attended to, and apparently more than half offended, the brisk old lady trotted away.

That island was a dreary place; without a tree or any shelter from the glare of sun and sea, whose combined influences threatened blindness, sun-stroke, or at the very least blistered the faces of those who stepped beyond their tents by day. The Prince's orders, however, strictly confined his army within its bounds, except that at twilight parties were sent ashore for water and provisions, under strict orders, however, to hold no parley with any one from the French or Sicilian camps, lest they should bring home the infection of the pestilence; and always under the command of some trustworthy knight, able and willing to enforce the command.

The Prince himself refused all participation in the counsels of Charles of Anjou, and confined himself, like his men, entirely to the fleet and island. Charles contrived to spread a report, that his displeasure was solely due to his disappointment at being balked of fighting with the Tunisians; and that instead of indignant grief at the perversion of the wrecked Crusade, he was only showing the sullenness of an aggrieved swordsman. Even young Philippe le Hardi, a dull, heavy, ignorant youth, was led to suppose this was the cause of his offence, and though daily inquiries were sent through the Genoese crews for his health, he made no demonstration of willingness to see his cousin of England.

Thus Richard had no opportunity of ascertaining whether there were any basis for the strange impression he had received in St. Louis's death-chamber. It would have been an act of disobedience, not soon overlooked by the Prince, had one of his immediate suite transgressed his commands, and indeed, so strict was the discipline, that it would scarcely have been possible to make the attempt. Besides, Richard's time was entirely engrossed between his duties in attending on the Prince, and his care of little John of Dunster, who had a sharp attack of fever, and was no doubt only carried through it by the experienced skill of Dame Idonea Osbright, and by Richard's tender nursing. Somehow the dame's heart was not won, even by the elder page's dutiful care and obedience to all her directions. Partly she viewed him as a rival in the affections of the patient—who, poor little fellow, would in his companion's absence be the child he was, and let her treat him like his mother, or old nurse, chattering to her freely about home, and his home-sick longings; whereas the instant any male companion appeared, he made it a point of honour to be the manly warrior and crusader, just succeeding so far as to be sullen instead of plaintive; though when left to Richard, he could again relax his dignity, and become natural and affectionate. But besides this species of jealousy, Richard suspected that Lady Osbright knew, or at least guessed, his own parentage, and disliked him for it accordingly. She had never forgotten the distress and degradation of his mother's stolen marriage, nor forgiven his father for it; she had often stung the proud heart of his brother Henry, when he shared the nursery of his cousins the princes; and her sturdy English dislike of foreigners, and her strong narrow personal loyalty, had alike resulted in the most vehement hatred of the Earl of Leicester, whose head she would assuredly have welcomed with barbarous exultation, worthy of her Danish ancestors. Little chance, then, was there that she would regard with favour his son under a feigned name, fostered in the Prince's own court and camp.

She was a constraint, and almost a vexation, to Richard, and he heartily wished that the boy's recovery would free his tent from her. The boy did recover favourably, in spite of all the discomforts of the island, and was decidedly convalescent when, after nearly ten days' isolation on the island, Edward drew out his whole force upon the shore to do honour to the embarkation of the relics of Louis IX. It was one of the most solemn and melancholy pageants that could be conceived. A wide lane of mailed soldiers was drawn up, Sicilians and Provencals on the one side, and on the other, English and the Knights of the two Orders. All stood, or sat on horseback in shining steel, guarding the way along which were carried the coffins. In memory, perhaps, of Louis's own words, "I, your leader, am going first," his remains headed the procession, closely followed by those of his young son; and behind it marched his two brothers, Charles and Alfonse, and his son-in-law, the King of Navarre (the two latter already bearing the seeds of the fatal malady), and the three English princes, Edward, Edmund, and Henry of Almayne, each followed by his immediate suite. The long line of coffins of French counts and nobles, whose lives had in like manner been sacrificed, brought up the rear; and alas! how many nameless dead must have been left in the ruins!

Each coffin when brought to the shore was placed in a boat, and with muffled oars transplanted to the vessel ready to receive it, while the troops remained drawn up on the shore. The procession that ensued was almost more mournful. It was still of biers, but these were not of the dead but of the living, and again the foremost was the King of France, while next to him came his sister, the Queen of Navarre. Edward went down to his litter, as it was brought on the beach, and offered him his arm as he feebly stepped forth to enter the boat. Philippe looked up to his tall cousin, and wrung his hands as he murmured, "Alas! what is to be the end of all this?" Edward made kind and cheerful reply, that things would look better when they met at Trapani, and then almost lifted the young king into his boat. Poor youth, he had not yet seen the end! He was yet to lose his wife, his brother-in-law, and his uncle and aunt, ere he should see his home again.

Richard and Hamlyn de Valence, as part of the Prince's train, had moved in the procession; and they were for the rest of the day in close attendance on their lord, conveying his numerous orders for the embarkation of the troops on the morrow, on their return to Sicily. It was not till night-fall that Richard returned to his tent, where John of Dunster was sitting on the sand at the door, eagerly watching for him. "Well, Jack, my lad, how hast thou sped?" asked he, advancing. "Couldst see our doleful array?"

"Is it thou, indeed, this time?" said the boy, catching at his cloak.

"Why, who should it be?"

"Thy wraith! Thy double-ganger has been here Richard."

"What, dreaming again?"

'No no! I am well, I am strong. But this IS the land of enchantment! Thou knowst it is. Did we not see a fleet of fairy boats sailing on the sea? and a leaf eat up a fly here on this very tent pole? And did not the Fay Morgaine show us towns and castles and churches in the sea? Thou didst not call me light-headed then, Richard; thou sawest it too!"

"But this wraith of mine! Where didst see it?"

"In this tent. I was lying on the sand, trying if I could make it hold enough to build a castle of it, when the curtain was put back, and there thou stoodest, Richard!"

"Well, did I speak or vanish?"

"Oh, thou spakest—I mean the THING spake, and it said, 'Is this the tent of the young Lord of Montfort?' How now—what have I said?"

"Whom did he ask for?" demanded Richard breathlessly.

"Montfort—young Lord de Montfort!" replied John; "I know it was, for he said it twice over."

"And what didst thou answer?"

"What should I answer? I said we had no Montforts here; for they were all dishonoured traitors, slain and outlawed."

Richard could not restrain a sudden indignant exclamation that startled the boy. "Every one says so! My father says so!" he returned, somewhat defiantly.

"Not of the Earl," said Richard, recollecting himself.

"He said every one of the young Montforts was a foul traitor, and man-sworn tyrant, as bad as King John had been ere the Charter," repeated John hotly, "and their father was as bad, since he would give no redress. Thou knowst how they served us in Somerset and Devon!"

"I have heard, I have heard," said Richard, cutting short the story, and controlling his own burning pain, glad that the darkness concealed his face. "No more of that; but tell me, what said this stranger?"

"Thou thinkest it was really a stranger, and not thy wraith?" said John anxiously. "I hope it was, for Dame Idonea said if it were a wraith, it betokened that thou wouldst not—live long—and oh, Richard! I could not spare thee!"

And the little fellow came nestling up to his friend's breast in an access of tenderness, such as perhaps he would have disdained save in the darkness.

"Did Dame Idonea see him?" asked Richard.

"No; but she came in soon after he had vanished."

"Vanished! What, like Fay Morgaine's castles? Tell me in sooth, John; it imports me to know. What did this stranger, when thou spakest thus of the House of Montfort?"

"He answered," said John; "he did not answer courteously—he said, that I was a malapert little ass, and demanded again where this young Montfort's tent was. So then I said, that if a Montfort dared to show his traitor's face in this camp, the Prince would hang him as high as Judas; for I wanted to be rid of him, Richard! it was so dreadful to see thy face, and hear thy voice talking French, and asking for dead traitors."

"French!" said Richard. "Methought thou knewst no French!"

"I—I have heard it long now, more's the pity," faltered John, "and— and I'd have spoken anything to be rid of that shape."

"And wert thou rid? What befell then?"

"It cursed the Prince, and King, and all of them," said John with a shudder; "it looked black and deadly, and I crossed myself, and said the Blessed Name, and no doubt it writhed itself and went off in brimstone and smoke, for I shut my eyes, and when I looked up again it was gone!"

"Gone! Didst look after him?"

"Oh, no! Earthly things are all food for a brave man's sword," said Master John, drawing himself up very valiantly, "but wraiths and things from beneath—they do scare the very heart out of a man. And I lay, I don't know how, till Dame Idonea came in; and she said either the foul fiend had put on thy shape because he boded thee ill, or it was one of the traitor brood looking for his like."

"Tell me, John," said Richard anxiously; "surely he was not in all points like me. Had he our English white cross?"

"I cannot say as to the cross," said John; "meseemed it was all you— yourself—and that was all—only I thought your voice was strange and hollow—and—now I think of it—yes—he was bearded—brown bearded. And," with a sudden thought, "stand up, prithee, in the opening of the tent;" and then taking his post where he had been sitting at the time of the apparition, "He was not so tall as thou art. Thy head comes above the fold of the curtain, and his, I know, did not touch it, for I saw the light over it. Then thou dost not think it was thy wraith?" he added anxiously.

"I think my wraith would have measured me more exactly both in stature and in age," said Richard lightly. "But how did Leonillo comport himself? He brooks not a stranger in general; and dogs cannot endure the presence of a spirit."

"Ah! but he fawned upon this one, and thrust his nose into his hand," said John, "and I think he must have run after him; for it was so long ere he came back to me, that I had feared greatly he was gone, and oh, Richard! then I must have gone too! I could never have met you without Leonillo."

By this time Richard had little doubt that the visitor must have been one of his brothers, Simon or Guy, who were not unlikely to be among the Provencals, in the army of Charles of Anjou. He had not been thought to resemble them as a boy, but he had observed how much more alike brothers appear to strangers than they do to their own family; and he knew by occasional observations from the Prince, as well as from his brother Henry's recognition of his voice, that the old Montfort characteristics must be strong in himself. He would not, however, avow his belief to John of Dunster. Secrecy on his own birth had been enjoined on him by his uncle the King; and disobedience to the old man's most trifling commands was always sharply resented by the Prince; nor was the boy's view of the House of Montfort very favourable to such a declaration. Richard really loved the brave little fellow, and trusted that some day when the discovery must be made, it would be coupled with some exploit that would show it was no name to be ashamed of. So he only told the boy that he had no doubt the stranger was a foreign knight, who had once known the old Leicester family; but bade him mention the circumstance to no one. He feared, however, that the caution came too late, since Dame Idonea was not only an inveterate gossip, but was likely to hold in direful suspicion any one who had been inquired for by such a name.

The personal disappointment of having missed his brother was great. Richard was very lonely. The Princes, and Hamlyn de Valence, were the only persons who knew his secret, and both by Prince Edmund and De Valence he was treated with indifference or dislike. Edward himself, though the object of his fervent affection, and his protector in all essentials, was of a reserved nature, and kept all his attendants at a great distance. On very rare occasions, when his feelings had been strongly stirred—as in the instance of his visit to his uncle's death-chamber—he might sometimes unbend; and momentary flashes from the glow of his warm deep heart went further in securing the love and devotion of those around him, than would the daily affability of a lower nature; but in ordinary life, towards all concerned with him except his nearest relations, he was a strict, cold, grave disciplinarian, ever just, though on the side of severity, and stern towards the slightest neglect or breach of observance, nor did he make any exception in favour of Richard. If the youth seldom received one of his brief annihilating reproofs, it was because they were scarcely ever merited; but he had experienced that any want of exactitude in his duties was quite as severely visited as if he had not been the Prince's close kinsman, romantically rescued by him, and placed near his person by his special desire. And Eleanor, with all her gentle courtesy and kindness, was strictly withheld by her husband from pampering or cockering his pages; nor did she ever transgress his will.

The atmosphere was perhaps bracing, but it was bleak: and there were times when Richard regretted his acceptance of the Prince's offer, and yearned after family ties, equality, and freedom. Simon and Guy had never been kind to him, but at least they were his brothers, and with them disguise and constraint would be over—he should, too, be in communication with his mother and sister. He was strongly inclined to cast in his lot with them, and end this life of secrecy, and distrust from all around him save one, and his loyal love ill requited even by that one. It grieved him keenly that one of his brothers should have been repulsed from his tent; an absolutely famished longing for fraternal intercourse gained possession of him, and as he lay on his pallet that night in the dark, he even shed tears at the thought of the greeting and embrace that he had missed.

Still he had hopes for the future. There must be meetings and possibilities of inquiries passing between the three armies, and he would let no opportunity go by. The next day, however, there was no chance. The English troops were embarked in their vessels, and after a short and prosperous passage were again landed at Trapani, the western angle of Sicily. The French had sailed first, but were not in harbour when the English came in; and the Sicilians, who had brought up the rear, arrived the next day, but still there was no tidings of the French. Towards the evening, however, the royal vessel bearing Philippe III. came into harbour, and all the rest were in sight, when at sunset a frightful storm arose, and the ships were in fearful case. Many foundered, many were wrecked on the rocky islets around the port, and the French army was almost as much reduced in numbers as it had been by the Plague of Carthage.

Charles of Anjou remained himself in the town of Trapani, but knowing the evils of crowding a small space with troops, he at once sent his men inland, and Richard was again disappointed of the hope of seeing or hearing of his brothers; for the Prince still forbade all intercourse with the shattered remnant of the French army, justly dreading that they might still carry about them the seeds of the infection of the camp.

The three heads of the Crusade, however, met in the Castle of Trapani to hold council on their future proceedings. The place was the state-chamber of the castle.

Each prince had brought with him a single attendant, and the three stood in waiting near the door, in full view of their lords, though out of earshot. It was an opportunity that Richard could not bear to miss of asking for his brothers, unheard by any of those English ears who would be suspicious about his solicitude for the House of Montfort. A lively-looking Neapolitan lad was the attendant of King Charles; and in spite of all the perils of attempting conversation while thus waiting, Richard had—while the princes were greeting one another, and taking their seats—ventured the question, whether any of the sons of the English Earl of Leicester were in the Sicilian army. Of Earl of Leicester the Italian knew nothing; but Count of Montfort was a more familiar sound. "Si, si, vero!" Sicily had rung with it; and Count Rosso Aldobrandini, of the Maremma Toscana, had given his only daughter and heiress to the banished English knight, Guido di Monforte, who had served in the king's army as a Provencal.

Richard's heart beat high. Guy a well-endowed count, with a castle, lands, and home! He would have asked where Guy now was, and how far off was the Maremma; but the conference between the princes was actually commencing, and silence became necessary on the part of their attendants.

They could only hear the murmur of voices; but could discern plainly the keen looks and animated gestures of Charles of Anjou, the sickly sullen indifference of Philippe, and the majestic gravity of Edward, whose noble head towered above the other two as if he were their natural judge. Charles was, in fact, trying to persuade the others to sail with him for Greece, and there turn their forces on the unfortunate Michael Palaeologos, who had lately recovered Constantinople, the Empire that Charles hoped to win for himself, the favoured champion of Rome.

Philippe merely replied that he had had enough of crusading, he was sick and weary, he must go home and bury his father, and get himself crowned. Charles might be then seen trying a little hypocrisy; and telling Philippe that his saintly father would only have wished to speed him on the way of the Cross. Then that trumpet voice of Edward, whose tones Richard never missed, answered, "What is the way of the Cross, fair uncle?"

It was well known that Louis IX. had refused to crusade against Christians, even Greek Christians, and Philippe soon sheltered himself under the plea that had not at first occurred to his dull mind. In effect, he laid particulars before his uncle, that quickly made it plain that the French army was in too miserable a condition to do anything but return home; and Charles then addressed his persuasions to Edward—striving to convince him in the first place of the sanctity of a war against Greek heretics, and when Edward proved past being persuaded that arms meant for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre ought not to be employed against Christians who reverenced it, he tried to demonstrate the uselessness of hoping to conquer the Holy Land, even by such a Crusade as had been at first planned, far less with the few attached to Edward's individual banner. Long did the king argue on. His low voice was scarcely audible, even without the words; but Edward's brief, ringing, almost scornful, replies, never failed to reach Richard's ear, and the last of them was, "It skills not, my fair uncle. For the Holy Land I am vowed to fight, and thither would I go had I none with me but Fowen, my groom!"

And withal his eye lit on Richard, with a look of certainty of response; of security that here was one to partake his genuine ardour, and of refreshment in the midst of his disgust with the selfish uncle and sluggish cousin. That look, that half smile, made the youth's heart bound once more. Yes, with him he would go to the ends of the earth! What was the freedom of Guy's castle, to the following of such a lord and leader in such a cause?

Richard could have thrown himself at his feet, and poured forth pledges of fidelity. But in ten minutes he was following home the unapproachable, silent, cold warrior.

And the lack of any outlet for his aspirations turned them back upon themselves, with a strange sense of bitterness and almost of resentment. Leonillo alone, as the creature lay at his feet, and looked up into his face with eyes of deep wistful meaning, seemed to him to have any feeling for him; and Leonillo became the recipient of many an outpouring of something between discontent and melancholy. Leonillo, the sole remnant of his home! He burnt for that Holy Land where he was to win the name and fame lacking to him; but there was to be long delay.

Fain would the Prince have proceeded at once to Palestine; but the Genoese, from whom, in the abeyance of the English navy, he had been obliged to hire his transports, absolutely refused to sail for the East until after the three winter months; and he was therefore obliged to remain in Sicily. King Charles invited him to spend Christmas at the court at Syracuse or Naples, in hopes, perhaps, of persuading him to the Greek expedition; but Edward was far too much displeased with the Angevin to accept his hospitality; recollecting, perhaps, that such a sojourn had been little beneficial to his great- uncle Coeur de Lion's army. He decided upon staying where he was, in the remotest corner of Sicily, and keeping his three hundred crusaders as much to themselves and to strict military discipline as possible, maintaining them at his own cost, and avoiding as far as he could all transactions with the cruel and violent Provencal adventurers, with whom Charles had filled the island.

Thus Richard found his hopes of obtaining further intelligence about his brothers entirely passing away. He did, indeed, venture on one day saying to the Prince, "My Lord, I hear that my brother Guy hath become a Neapolitan count!"

"A Tuscan robber would be nearer the mark!" coldly replied Edward.

"And," added Richard, "methought, while the host is in winter quarters, I would venture on craving your license, my Lord, to visit him?"

"Thou hast thy choice, Richard," answered the Prince, with grave displeasure; "loyalty and honour with me, or lawlessness and violence with thy brother. Both cannot be thine!"

And returning to his study of the Lais of Marie de France, he made it evident that he would hear no more, and left Richard to a sharp struggle; in which hot irritation and wounded feeling would have carried him away at once from the stern superior who required the sacrifice of all his family, and gave not a word of sympathy in return. It was the crusading vow alone that detained the youth. He could not throw away his pledge to the wars of the Cross, and it was plain that if he went now to seek out Guy, he should never be allowed to return to the crusading army. But that vow once fulfilled, proud Edward should see, that not merely sufferance but friendliness was needed to bind the son of his father's sister to his service. The brother at Bednall Green was right, this bondage was worse than beggary. Nor, under the influence of these feelings, had Richard's service the alacrity and affection for which it had once been remarkable: the Prince rebuked his short-comings unsparingly, and thus added to the sense of injury that had caused them; Hamlyn de Valence sneered, and Dame Idonea took good care to point out both the youth's neglects and his sullenness, and to whisper significantly that she did not wonder, considering the stock he came of. A soothing word or gentle excuse from the kind-hearted Princess were the only gleams of comfort that rendered the present state of things endurable.

Just after Christmas arrived a vessel with reinforcements from home. Among them came a small body of Hospitaliers, with the novice Raynal at their head, now a full-blown knight, in dazzling scarlet and white, as Sir Reginald Ferrers. Richard at once recognized him, when he came to present himself to the Prince, and was very desirous of learning whether he knew aught of that other brother, so mysteriously hidden in obscurity. Sir Raynal on his side seemed to share the desire; he exchanged a friendly glance with the page, and when the formality of the reception was over sought him out, saying, "I have a greeting for you, Master Fowen."

"From Sir Robert Darcy?" asked Richard. "How fares it with the kind old knight?"

"Excellent well! Nay, nothing fares amiss with Father Robert!" said the young knight, smiling. "Everything is the very best that could have befallen him—to hear him speak. He is the very sunshine of the Spital, and had he been ordered on this Crusade, I think all the hamlets round would have risen to withhold him."

"Ah!" said Richard, hoping he was acting indifference; "said he aught of the little maiden with the blind father?"

"Pretty Bessee and Blind Hal of Bednall Green? Verily, that was the purport of my message. The poor knave hath been sorely sick and more cracked than ever this autumn; insomuch that Father Robert spent whole nights with him; and though he be better now, and as much in his senses as e'er he will be, such another access is like to make an end of him. Now, Father Robert saith that you, Sir Page, know who the poor man is by birth, and that he prays you to send him word what had best be done with the child, in case either of his death or of his getting so frenzied as to be unable to take care of her."

"Send him word!" repeated Richard in perplexity.

"We shall certainly have some one returning soon to the Spital," replied Sir Raynal. "Indeed, methinks some of the princes will be like to return, for the old King of the Romans is failing fast, and King Henry implored that the Prince of Almayne would come to hearten him."

"Then must I write to Sir Robert?" said Richard; "mine is scarce a message for word of mouth."

"So he said it was like to be," returned the knight, "and he took thought to send you a slip of parchment, knowing, he said, that such things are not wont to be found in a crusader's budget. Moreover, if ink be wanting, he bade me tell you that there's a fish in these seas, with many arms, and very like the foul fiend, that carries a bag of ink as good as any scrivener s.

"I have seen the monster," said Richard, who had often been down to the beach to see the unlading of the fishermen's boats, and to share little John of Dunster's unfailing marvel, that the Mediterranean should produce such outlandish creatures, so alien to his Bristol Channel experiences.

And the very next time the boats came in, Richard made his way to the shore, on the beautiful, rocky, broken coast; and presently encountered a sepia, which fully justified Sir Robert's comparison, lying at the bottom of a boat. The fisherman intended it for his own dinner, when all his choicer fish should have gone to supply the Friday's meal of the English chivalry; and he was a good deal amazed when the young gentleman, making his Provencal as like Sicilian as he could, began to traffic with him for it, and at last made him understand that it was only its ink-bag that he wanted.

The said ink, secured in a shell, was brought home by Richard, together with a couple of the largest sea-bird's quills that he could find—and which he shaped with his dagger, as best he might, in remembrance of Father Adam de Marisco's writing lessons. He meditated what should be the language of his letter, which was not likely to be secure from the eyes of the few who could read it; and finally decided that English was the tongue known to the fewest readers, who, if they knew letters at all, were sure to be acquainted with French and Latin.

On a strip of parchment, then, about nine inches long and three wide, he proceeded to indite, in upright cramped letters, with many contractions, nearly in such terms as these -

REVEREND AND KNIGHTLY FATHER,

The good ghostly father and knight, Sir Raynald Ferrers, hath borne to me your tidings of my brother's sickness, and of all your goodness to him—whereof I pray that our blessed Lady and good St. John may reward you, for I can only pray for you. Touching his poor little daughter, in case of his death or frenzy, which the Saints of their mercy forefend, I would entreat you of your goodness to place her in some nunnery, but without making known her name and quality until my return; so Heaven bring me home safe. But an if I should be slain in this Eastern land, then were it most for the little one's good to present her to the gracious lady Princess, by whom she would be most lovingly and naturally cared for; and would be more safe than with such as might shun to own her rights of blood and heirship. Commend me to my brother, if so be that he cares to hear of me; and tell him that Guy hath wedded the lady of a castle in the land of Italy. And so praying you, ghostly father, for your blessing, I greet you well, and rest your grateful bedesman and servant,

RICHARD OF LEICESTER.

Given at the Prince's camp at Drepanum, in the realm of Sicilia, on the octave of the Epiphany, in the year of grace MCCLXX.; and so our Lord have you heartily in His keeping.

Letter-writing was a mighty task; and Richard's extemporary implements were not of the best. He laboured hard over his composition, kneeling against a chest in the tent. When at length he raised his head, he encountered a face full of the most utter amazement. Little John of Dunster had come into the tent, and stood gazing at him with open eyes and gaping mouth, as if he were perpetrating an incantation. Richard could not help laughing.

"Why, Jack, dost think I am framing a spell for thee?"

"Writing!" gasped John, relieving his distended mouth by at length closing it.

"Wherefore not? Did not I see the chaplain teaching thee to write at Guildford?"

"Ay—but that was when I was a babe! Writing! Why, my father never writes!"

"But the Prince does. Thou hast seen him write. Come now," added Richard: "if thou wilt, I will help thee to write a letter to send thy greetings home to Dunster. Thy father and mother will be right glad to hear thou hast 'scaped that African fever."

"They!—They'd think me no better than a French monk!" said John. "And none of them could read it either! I'll never write! My grandsire only set his cross to the great charter!"

And John retreated—in fear perhaps that Richard would sully his manhood with a writing lesson!

The letter was rolled up in a scroll, bound with a silken thread, and committed to the charge of Sir Raynald Ferrers, who was going shortly to be commandery of his Order at Castel San Giovanni, whence he had no doubt of being able to send the letter safely to Sir Robert Darcy, at the Grand Priory.

It would perhaps have been more expeditious to have intrusted the letter to one of the suite of Prince Henry of Almayne, who had been recalled by the tidings of the state of his father's health; but Richard dreaded betraying his brother's secret too much to venture on confiding the missive to any of this party—none of whom were indeed likely to wish to oblige him. Hamlyn de Valence was going with Henry as his esquire; and his absence seemed to Richard like the beginning of better days.



CHAPTER IX—ASH WEDNESDAY



"Mostrocci un ombra da l' un canto sola Dicendo 'Colui feese in grembo a Dio Lo cuor che'n su Tamigi ancor si cola.'" DANTE. Inferno.

Shrovetide had come, and the Prince had, before leaving Trapani, been taking some share in the entertainments of the Carnival. Personally, his grave reserve made gaieties distasteful to him; and the disastrous commencement of the Crusade weighed on his spirits. But when state and show were necessary, he provided for them with royal bounty and magnificence, and caused them to be regulated with the admirable taste of that age of exceeding beauty in which he lived.

Thus, in this festal season, banquets were provided, and military shows took place, for the benefit of the Sicilian nobility and of the citizens of Trapani, on such a scale, that the English rose high in general esteem; and many were the secret wishes that Edmund of Lancaster rather than Charles of Anjou had been able to make good the grant from the Pope.

Splendid were the displays, and no slight toil did they involve on the part of the immediate train of the Prince, few in number as they were, and destitute of the appliances of the resident court. Richard hurrying hither and thither, and waiting upon every one, had little of the diversion of the affair; but he would willingly have taken treble the care and toil in the relief it was to be free from the prying mistrustful eyes of Hamlyn de Valence. Looking after little John of Dunster was, however, no small part of his trouble; the urchin was so certain to get into some mischief if left to himself— now treading on a lady's train, now upsetting a flagon of wine, now nearly impaling himself upon the point of a whole spitful of ortolans that were being handed round to the company, now becoming uncivilly deaf upon his French ear. Altogether, it was a relief to Richard's mind when he stumbled upon the little fellow fast asleep, even though it was in the middle of the Princess's violet velvet and ermine mantle, which she had laid down in order to tread a stately measure with Sire Guillaume de Porceles.

After all Richard's exertions that evening, it was no wonder that the morning found him fast asleep at the unexampled hour of eight! His wakening was a strange one. His little fellow-page was standing beside him with a strange frightened yet important air.

"What is the matter, John? It is late? Is the Prince gone to Mass? Has he missed me?" cried Richard, starting up in dismay, for unpunctuality was a great offence with Edward.

"He is gone to Mass," said John, "but, before he comes back," he came near and lowered his voice, "Hob Longbow sent me to say you had better flee."