Heroines of the Crusades Part 30

He dashed the rowels into his steed, and was soon lost among the hills.

CHAPTER VII.

Meantime the palace of Acre had been witness of a fearful scene. Since the fall of Nazareth the Emir of Joppa had opened negotiations with Edward, professing a desire to become a christian convert. So eager was the king for this happy consummation that he cherished the deceitful hope, held out by the Infidel, and granted him every opportunity for gaining information concerning the tenets and practices of the church.

Letters and messages frequently pa.s.sed between them, and so accustomed had the English guards become to the brown haick and green turban of the swarthy Mohammedan, who carried the despatches, that they gave him free ingress to the city and admitted him to the palace, and even ushered him into the king's ante-chamber almost without question or suspicion.

The day had been unusually sultry, even for the Syrian climate. The heat of the atmosphere somewhat aggravated the symptoms of the disease from which Edward was slowly recovering, and Eleanora had pa.s.sed many weary hours in vain endeavors to soothe his restlessness and induce repose.

As the sun declined a cooling breeze sprang up from the sea, seeming to the patient wife to bear healing on its wings, and the invalid, stretched on his couch before the cas.e.m.e.nt, began at length to yield to the soothing influence of slumber, when the chamberlain entered to say that the emissary from Joppa waited an audience.

"Now have I no faith in the conversion of this Infidel," said Eleanora, with an impatience unusual to her gentle spirit, "since his messenger disturbs my lord's repose."

"Verily thou lackest thine accustomed charity," replied Edward. "I had thought to hear thee declare the conversion of this Saracen my crowning glory in Palestine. But thou art weary, my love. Go to thy rest, thy long vigils by my side have already gathered the carnation from thy cheek."

"Yet, my lord--" interposed Eleanora.

"Nay, nay," said Edward, "disturb not thy sweet soul; perchance more than my life depends upon the interview. I will straight dismiss the envoy, and then thou canst entrust my slumbers to the care of the faithful Eva."

At the mention of Eva a new and not less painful train of a.s.sociations was awakened in the mind of Eleanora, and with a heavy sigh she withdrew as the messenger entered.

A moment after there were sounds as of a violent struggle and of the fall of a heavy body, and Eleanora, who had lingered in the ante-chamber, scarcely knowing why, rushed back into the apartment, followed by the chamberlain and guards.

The a.s.sa.s.sin lay upon the floor in the agonies of death, his head broken by the oaken tressel from which she had just risen. Prostrate by his side lay the prince, in a state of insensibility, the blood faintly oozing from a wound in his arm. The princess comprehended at once the risk her husband had incurred, and shuddered with apprehension at the thought of the danger that yet might menace him; and while the attendants lifted him from the floor, she tenderly raised his arm to her lips, and began to draw the venom from the wound. But no sooner did Edward revive from his swoon, than, forcibly thrusting her aside, he exclaimed, "Eleanora my life, knowest thou not the dagger was poisoned?"

"Even so, my lord," said she, with steadfast composure, still firmly persisting in her purpose, notwithstanding his constant remonstrance.

The fearful intelligence of their leader's peril spread with lightning speed through the city, and self-sent messengers hurried in every direction, and summoned leeches and priests to cure or shrive the dying monarch. The Grand Master of the Temple, who was somewhat practised in the habits of the a.s.sa.s.sins, appeared in the midst of the exciting scene, and commending the timely application of Eleanora's loving lips, bound up the wound with a soft emollient, and prescribed for the princess an antidote of sovereign efficacy.

Scarcely had silence resumed her dominion in the palace, when the porter was again aroused to admit de Courtenay and his rescued Eva. The traitor D'Essai had been lodged in the tower of Maledictum, to wait Edward's pleasure concerning him; and Eva, her heart overflowing with rapture in the a.s.surance of Sir Henry's restored confidence, and the security of a father's love, pa.s.sed the livelong night with Eleanora, in that free communion of soul which generous natures experience when the gushings of a common emotion overleap the barriers of conventionalism and formality.

Edward was himself again. The steady ray of reason had subdued the fevered gleam of his eye, and the ruddy hue of health replaced the pallor of wasting sickness upon his cheek. His athletic frame had wrestled with disease, and come off conqueror over weakness and pain; and as he a.s.sumed his seat of judgment, clad in his warlike panoply, the royal Plantagenet "looked every inch a king." The great church of Acre was thrown open, and knights in brilliant armor, and Templars and Hospitallers in the habiliments of their orders, bishops and priests in their sacred robes, and va.s.sals in their holiday array, crowded up the long aisles, and filled the s.p.a.cious choir, as though eager to witness some splendid ceremonial.

But instead of gorgeous decorations, wainscot and window draped with black diffused a funereal gloom, and the solemn reverberation of the tolling bell seemed to sound a requiem over the grave of Hope.

Sir Francis d'Essai had been tried in a council of his peers, and found guilty of treason to religion and knightly devoir; and this day, the anniversary of his admission to the rank of knighthood, his companions in arms, the va.s.sals whom he despised, and all those actuated by curiosity or enmity, were a.s.sembled to witness his _degradation_. Eva shuddered at the terrible doom of her former lover, and de Courtenay, with instinctive delicacy, had obtained permission to absent himself from the scene on a visit to the Holy Sepulchre. As king-of-arms, and first in rank, it was the duty of Edward to preside over this fearful ceremony, which, by the true and loyal, was regarded as more terrible than death itself.

At the first stroke of the great bell, the pursuivants, having robed Sir Francis for the last time in his knightly habiliments, conducted him from the _Cursed Tower_ toward the church. As they entered the door, the doleful peal sank in silence, and, after one awful moment, his fellow-knights, with broken voices, began to chant the burial service.

An elevated stage, hung with black, had been erected in the centre of the nave, and upon this the pursuivants, whose business it was to divest him of every outward insignia of courage and truth, placed the culprit, in full view of all the vast concourse.

When the chanting ceased, Prince Edward spoke in a voice that thrilled to every heart, "Sir Francis d'Essai! thou who didst receive the sword of knighthood from the hand of the good St. Louis, dost stand before us this day attaint of treason to thy G.o.d, thy truth, and the lady of thy love.

Wherefore thy peers have willed that the order of knighthood, by the which thou hast received all the honor and worship upon thy body, _be brought to nought_, and thy state be undone, and thou be driven forth outcast and dishonored according to thy base deserts." Instantly the brazen tongue from the belfry ratified the fiat, and announced the hour of doom. At the word, the squire with trembling hand removed the helmet, the defence of disloyal eyes, revealing the pale and haggard countenance of the recreant knight, and the choir resumed the mournful dirge. Then each pursuivant advanced in his order to the performance of his unwelcome duty. One by one the knightly trappings of D'Essai were torn from his body, and as cuira.s.s, greaves, bra.s.sarts, and gauntlets rang upon the pavements, the heralds exclaimed, "Behold the harness of a miscreant!"

Trembling and bent beneath the weight of shame, the craven stood, while they smote the golden spurs from his heels, and brake his dishonored sword above his head, and the terrible requiem wailed over the perished emblems of his former innocence.

The Grand Master of the Templars then entered upon the stage, bearing a silver basin filled with tepid water, and the herald, holding it up, exclaimed, "By what name call men the knight before us?"

The pursuivants answered, "The name which was given him in baptism,--the name by which his father was known,--the name confirmed to him in chivalry is Sir Francis d'Essai."

The heralds again replied, "Falsehood sits upon his tongue and rules in his heart; he is miscreant, traitor, and Infidel."

Immediately the Grand Master, in imitation of baptism, dashed the water in his face, saying, "Henceforth be thou called by thy right name, Traitor!"

Then the heralds rang out a shrill note upon the trumpets, expressive of the demand, "What shall be done with the false-hearted knave?" Prince Edward in his majesty arose, and in a voice agitated with a sense of the awful penalty, replied, "Let him with dishonor and shame be banished from the kingdom of Christ--Let his brethren curse him, and let not the angels of G.o.d intercede for him."

Immediately each knight drew his sword, and presenting its gleaming point against the now defenceless D'Essai, crowded him down the steps to the altar, where the pursuivants seized him, and forced him into his coffin, and placed him on the bier, and the attendant priests completed the burial-service over his polluted name and perjured soul. At a sign from the king, the bearers took up the bier, and all the vast congregation followed in sad procession, to the city-gates, where they thrust him out, a thing accursed, while the great bell from the lofty tower of the cathedral told the tale of his infamy in tones of terrible significance, "Gone--gone--gone--virtue, faith, and truth; lost--lost--lost--honor, fame, and love." From Carmel's h.o.a.ry height to Tabor's sacred top, each hallowed hill and vale reverberated the awful knell, "Gone and lost--lost and gone"--and the breeze that swept the plain of Esdraelon caught up the dismal echo, and seemed hurrying across the Mediterranean to whisper to the chivalry of Europe the dreadful story of his _degradation_.

Stung by the weight of woe that had fallen upon him, the miserable D'Essai rose and gazed across the plain. An arid waste spread out before him like the prospect of his own dreary future, blackened and desolate by the reign of evil pa.s.sions.

Life, what had it been to him? A feverish dream, a burning thirst, a restless, unsatisfied desire! Virtue--honor--truth--idle words, their solemn mockery yet rang in his ears. He ran--he flew--anywhere, anywhere to flee the haunting thoughts that trooped like fiends upon his track.

He neared the banks of the river, its cooling waters rolling on in their eternal channel, promised to allay his fever and bury his dishonored name in oblivion. He plunged in--that ancient river swept him away, the river Kishon, and as he sank to rise no more, a deep voice exclaimed, "So perish thine enemies, O Lord!" It was the voice of Dermot de la Clare, who, pa.s.sing southward at the head of his troop, from the opposite bank became an involuntary witness of the frantic suicide.

The week following the ceremony last described, Eva entered the apartment of Eleanora, each fair feature radiant with pleasure, bearing in her hand a carrier-pigeon, whose fluttering heart betokened the weary length of way that had tried the strength of its glossy pinions.

"Whence hast thou the dove, and what is his errand?" exclaimed the princess, equally eager for any intelligence that might affect the fate of the East.

"A Pullani brought it to the palace," she replied, and hastily cutting the silken thread, she detached a letter from beneath the wing of the bird. It contained but these words: "The Sultan of Egypt is hard pressed by the Moslems. It is a favorable moment to commence negotiations."

The seal of the Shamrock was the only signature, but Eva well understood that the Clare had been engaged in devising an honorable scheme to release Edward from an expedition which could not result in glory to the christian arms.

The prince had now been fourteen months in the Holy Land. His army, never sufficient to allow of his undertaking any military enterprise of importance, was reduced by sickness, want and desertion, and he therefore gladly accepted the hint of his unknown friend, and despatched de Courtenay to Egypt with proposals of peace.

It was a glad errand to the knight, though the timid and (she could not conceal it) loving Eva warned him most strenuously against the artifices of the Sultan, Al Malek al Dhaker Rokneddin Abulfeth Bibers al Alai al Bendokdari al Saheli, whose name, at least, she said, was _legion_.

"And were he the prince of darkness himself, the love of my guardian Eva would protect me against his wiles," gallantly returned the count.

"Alas!" said Eva, humbly, "thou little knowest the broken reed on which thou leanest. My weak will mocks my bravest resolutions, and makes me feel the need of a firmer spirit for my guide."

"Heaven grant that I may one day receive the grateful office," returned her lover.

"Heaven help me become worthy of thy n.o.ble devotion," said Eva, remembering with regret the cruel test to which she had subjected his generous affection.

De Courtenay found little difficulty in settling the terms of a ten years'

truce with the formidable Mameluke; for the Sultan had far greater reason to fear his Moslem than his Christian foes.

There was no occasion for the farther sojourn of the English in Palestine; and Edward, having accomplished nothing more than his great-uncle, and leaving a reputation scarcely inferior to Coeur de Lion, departed with his retinue for Europe.

Notwithstanding the peaceful termination of the expedition, this crusade, the last of the chivalrous offspring of Feudalism and Enthusiasm, like its elder brethren, found a premature grave in darkness and gloom.

The son of St. Louis, Philip the Hardy, returning from Tunis, deposited five coffins in the crypts of St. Denis. They contained the remains of his sainted father, Louis IX., of his brother Tristan, of his brother-in-law, Thibaut, descendant of Adela, of his beloved queen and their infant son.

Weak and dying himself, he was almost the only heir of his royal family.

The ambitious Charles d'Anjou, the rival and the murderer of Corradino, grandson of Frederic and Violante, plundered the stranded vessels of the returning crusaders, and thus enriched his kingdom of Sicily, by the great shipwreck of the empire and the church.

Death, too, had been busy in the palace of Windsor. The two beautiful children of Edward and Eleanora had been laid in the tomb, and their grandfather, Henry III., with their aunt Margaret, Queen of Scotland, soon followed them to the great charnel-house of England, Westminster Abbey.

The melancholy tidings of these repeated bereavements met the royal pair in Sicily, and cast a pall over the land to which they had antic.i.p.ated a triumphant return.