God Wills It! A Tale of the First Crusade. William Stearns Davis

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СКАЧАТЬ the fashion of the Greeks, with red ribbons on her neck and a blue silk mantle and riding-hood. Her mule had a saddle of fine, embossed leather, and silver bits. At her side rode an old man in a horse-litter led by foot-boys; he also daintily dressed, and with the handsome, clear-cut features and venerable white beard of a Greek gentleman. The lady had dropped her veil at his warning nod, but now she bent over the mule and half motioned to Richard.

      "You understand Greek, Sir Frank?" was her question; not in the mongrel Sicilian dialect, but in the stately tongue of Constantinople. In her voice was a little tremor and melody sweet as a springtime brook. The Norman bowed low.

      "I understand and speak, fair lady," replied he, in her own tongue.

      "How brave you have been!" cried the Greek, ingenuously; "I feared the raging horse would kill you."

      Richard shrugged his shoulders and laughed:—

      "It is nothing; I know horses as my second self."

      But the lady shook her head, and made all the red ribbons and bright veil flutter. "I am not wont to be contradicted," said she; "a brave deed, I say. I did not think you Franks so modest."

      The old man was leaning from the litter. "Let us ride, my daughter," he was commanding. The lady tapped her mule on the neck with the ivory butt of her whip. "Farewell, Sir Frank; St. Theodore keep you, if you make so light of peril!"

      Richard bowed again in silence. He would not forget those eyes in a day, though he had seen many bright eyes at Count Roger's court. "Ai," cried he to his companions, "to the castle, or the hawking begins without us."

      So they struck a brisk pace, whilst Herbert related how he had heard that the Greek gentleman, though a cripple, had stood high at the court of Constantinople, and that he had come to Cefalu on a Pisan ship a few days before. It was declared he was in exile, having fallen out of the Emperor's favor, and had been waiting at Cefalu until the bishop came up, giving them escort for the land journey to Palermo.

      "As for the daughter, ah! she is what you have just seen,—more precious than all the relics under a church altar; but her father watches her as if she were made of gold!"

      "I am vexed," replied the young man. "I did not know this before; it was uncourtly that persons of their rank should lodge in Cefalu, and no one of the castle wait on them." Then because one thought had led to another: "Tell me, Nasr, have you learned anything of that Spanish knight whom they say keeps himself at the country house of Hajib the Kadi? Assuredly he is no true cavalier, or he would not thus churlishly withdraw himself. There are none too many men of spirit here at Cefalu, for me to stick at making acquaintance."

      Nasr showed his sharp, white teeth.

      "Yes, I have gained sight of the Spaniard. From the brother-in-law of the cousin of the wife of the steward of the Kadi, I learn that he is called Musa, and is of a great family among the Andalusian Moslems."

      Richard chuckled at the circuit this bit of news had taken; then pressed:—

      "But you have seen him? What is he like?"

      "If my lord's slave"—Nasr was always respectful—"may speak,—the Spanish knight is a very noble cavalier. I saw him only once, yet my eye tells if a man has the port of a good swordsman and rider. Assuredly this one has, and his eyes are as keen and quick as a shooting star."

      "Yet he keeps himself very retired about the country house?"

      "True, Cid, yet this, they say, is because he is an exile in Sicily, and even here has fears for his life; so he remains quiet."

      "Foh!" grunted Richard, "I am weary of quiet men and a quiet life. I will go back to Palermo, and leave my father to eat his dinners and doze over his barony. I have the old grudge with De Valmont to settle, and some high words with Iftikhar, captain of the Saracen guards, will breed into a very pretty quarrel if I am bent on using them. Better ten broils than this sleepy hawking and feasting!"

      So they crossed the drawbridge, entered the outer walls of the bailey, with its squalid outbuildings, weather-beaten stables, the gray, bare donjon looming up above; and entering a tiny chapel, Richard and Herbert fell on their knees, while a priest—none other than Sebastian, who had stood at Hildebrand's side—chanted through the "Gloria" and "Preface" But when it came time for the sermon, the baron's two bears, caged in the bailey, drowned the pious prosings with an unholy roar as they fell on one another; and the good cleric cried, "Amen!" that all might run and drag them asunder.

      There by the cage Richard greeted his father,—a mighty man even in his old age, though his face was hacked and scarred, and showed little of the handsome young cavalier who had stolen the heart of every maid in Rouen. But in his blue Norman eyes still burned the genial fire; his tread was heavy as a charger's, his great frame straight as a plummet; a stroke of his fist could fell a horse, and his flail-like sword was a rush in his fingers. He was smooth-shaven; round his neck strayed a few white locks, all his crown worn bare by the long rubbing of his helmet. One could have learned his rank by the ermine lining on his under-mantle, by the gold plates on his sword belt and samite scabbard; but in a "villain's" dress he would have been known as one of those lordly cavaliers who had carried the Norman name and fame from the Scottish Marches to Thessaly.

      Father and son embraced almost in bear-fashion, each with a crushing hug. Then Richard must needs kiss his mother, the fair Lady Margaret of Auvergne, sweet and stately in her embroidered bleaunt, with golden circlet on her thick gray-gold hair; after her, Eleanor, a small maiden of sixteen, prim, demure, and very like her mother, with two golden braids that fell before her shoulders almost to her knees; and lastly, Stephen, a slight, dark lad, with a dreamy, contemplative face and an eye for books in place of arrow-heads, whom the family placed great hopes on: should he not be bishop, nay Pope, some bright day, if the saints favored?

      "Hola, Richard!" cried the Baron, with a spade-like paw on his son's shoulder. "So you made test of the white falcon; does she take quarry?"

      "A crane large enough to hold a dog at bay!"

      "Praised be St. Maurice! Come, let us eat, and then to horse and away!"

      So they feasted in the great hall, the plates and trenchers clattering, enough spiced wine to crack the heads of drinkers less hardened, the busy Norman varlets and Greek serving-maids buzzing to and fro like bees; for who could hawk with hunger under the girdle? A brief feast; and all had scattered right and left to make ready; but not for long.

      Soon they were again in the court, the Baron, his sons, and Herbert, with Aimeri, the falconer, who had brought out his pride, as fine a half-dozen of goshawks and gerfalcons as might be found in all Sicily. The birds were being strapped fast to each glove, the grooms were leading out the tall palfreys, and the Baron stood with one hand on the pommel of his saddle, ready to dig his spurs and be away, when a mighty clangor arose from the bronze slab hanging by the gate.

      "By St. Ouen," cried he, in a hot Norman oath, pausing in his spring, "what din is that? I have no mind to put off the hawking to bandy words with some wandering priest who would stop to swill my wine!"

      But Herbert, the seneschal, had gone to the gate, and came back with his wicked eyes dancing in his head.

      "Ho! My lord, there will be no hawking to-day!" he was bawling with all his lungs.

      "Why not, rascal?" growled the Baron; yet he, too, began to sniff an adventure, like a practised war-horse.

      "These people will make it clear to my lord."

      And after the seneschal trooped three very dissimilar persons, who СКАЧАТЬ