The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay Part 31

'Sire, I beseech you pity her.'

'I pity her deeply. I think I pity everybody with whom I have had to deal. I do not choose to have any more pitiful persons about me. Fare you well, sister. Go, lest I pity you.' She pleaded.

'Ah, sire!'

'The audience is at an end,' said the King; and the Queen of Sicily rose to take leave.

He kept his word, never saw Berengere again but once, and that was not yet. What remained for him to do in Syria he did, patched up a truce with Saladin, saw to Henry of Champagne's election, to Guy of Lusignan's establishment; dealt out such rewards and punishments as lay in his power, sent the two queens with a convoy to Ma.r.s.eilles. Then, two years from his hopeful entry into Acre as a conqueror, he left it a defeated man. He had won every battle he had fought and taken every city he had invested. His allies had beaten him, not the heathen.

They were to beat him again, with help. The very skies took their part.

He was beset by storms from the day he launched on the deep, separated from his convoy, driven from one sh.o.r.e to another, fatally delayed. His enemies had time to gather at home: Eustace of Saint-Pol, Beauvais, Philip of France; and behind all these was John of Mortain, moving heaven and earth and them to get him a realm. By a providence, as he thought it, Richard put into Corsica under stress of weather, and there heard how the land lay in Gaul. Philip had won over Raymond of Toulouse, Saint-Pol heading a joint-army of theirs was near Ma.r.s.eilles, ready to destroy him. King Richard was to walk into a trap. By this time, you must know, he had no more to his power than the galley he rode in, and three others. He had no Des Barres, no Gaston, no Beziers; he had not even Mercadet his captain, and no thought where they might be. The trap would have caught him fast.

'Pretty work,' he said, 'pretty work. But I will better it.' He put about, and steered round Sicily for the coast of Dalmatia; here was caught again by furious gales, lost three ships out of the four he had, and finally sought haven at Gazara, a little fishing village on that empty sh.o.r.e. His intention was to travel home by way of Germany and the Low Countries, and so land in England while his brother John was still in France. Either he had forgotten, or did not care to remember, that all this country was a fief of the Archduke Luitpold's. He knew, of course, that Luitpold hated him, but not that he held him guilty of Montferrat's murder. Suspecting no great difficulty, he sent up messengers to the lord of Gazara for a safe-conduct for certain merchants, pilgrims. This man was an Austrian knight called Gunther.

'Who are your pilgrims?' Gunther asked; and was told, Master Hugh, a merchant of Alost, he and his servants.

'What manner of a merchant?' was Gunther's next question.

'My lord,' they said, who had seen him, 'a fine man, tall as a tree, and strong and straight, having keen blue eyes, and a reddish beard on his chin, as the men of Flanders do not use.'

Gunther said, 'Let me see this merchant,' and went down to the inn where King Richard was.

Now Richard was sitting by the fire, warming himself. When Gunther came in, furred and portly, he did not rise up; which was unfortunate in a pretended merchant.

'Are you Master Hugh of Alost?' Gunther asked, looking him over.

'That is the name I bear,' said Richard. 'And who are you, my friend?'

The Austrian stammered. 'Hey, thou dear G.o.d, I am Lord Gunther of this castle and town!' he said, raising his voice. Then the King got up to make a reverence, and in so doing betrayed his stature.

'I should have guessed it, sir, by your gentleness in coming to visit me here. I ask your pardon.' Thus the King, while Gunther wondered.

'You are a very tall merchant, Hugh,' says he. 'Do they make your sort in Alost?' King Richard laughed.

'It is the only advantage I have of your lordship. For the rest, my countrywomen make straight men, I think.'

'Were you bred in Alost, Master Hugh?' asked Gunther suspiciously; and again Richard laughed as he said, 'Ah, you must ask my mother, Lord Gunther.'

'Lightning!' was the Austrian's thought; 'here is a pretty easy merchant.'

He raised some little difficulties, vexations of routine, which King Richard persistently laughed at, while doing his best to fulfil them.

Gunther did not relish this. He named the Archduke as his overlord, hard upon strangers. Richard let it slip that he did not greatly esteem the Archduke. However, in the end he got his safe-conduct, and all would have been well if, on leaving Gazara, he had not overpaid the bill.

Overpay is not the word: he drowned the bill. In a hurry for the road, the innkeeper fretted him. 'Reckoning, landlord!' he cried, with one foot in the stirrup: 'how the devil am I to reckon half-way up a horse?

Here, reckon yourself, my man, and content you with these.' He threw a fistful of gold besants on the flags, turned his horse sharply and cantered out of the yard. 'Colossal man!' gasped the innkeeper. 'King or devil, but no merchant under the sun.' So the news spread abroad, and Gunther puffed his cheeks over it. A six-foot-two man, a monstrous leisurely merchant, who rose not to the lord of a castle and town, who did not wait for his lordship's humour, but found laughable matter in his own; who was taller than the Archduke and thought his Grace a dull dog; who made a Danae of his landlord! Was this man Jove? Who could think the Archduke a dull dog except an Emperor, or, perhaps, a great king? A king: stay now. There were wandering kings abroad. How if Richard of England had lost his way? Here he slapped his thigh: but this must be Richard of England--what other king was so tall? And in that case, O thunder in the sky, he had let slip his Archduke's deadly enemy!

He howled for his lanzknechts, his boots, helmet, great sword; he set off at once, and riding by forest ways, cut off the merchant in a day and a night. He ran him to earth in the small wooden inn of a small wooden village high up in the Carinthian Alps, Blomau by name, which lies in a forest clearing on the road to Gratz.

King Richard was drinking sour beer in the kitchen, and not liking it.

The lanzknechts surrounded the house; Gunther with two of them behind him came clattering in. Glad of the diversion, Richard looked up.

'Ha, here is Lord Gunther again,' said he. 'Better than beer.'

'King Richard of England,' said the Austrian, white by nature, heat, and his feelings, 'I make you my prisoner.'

'So it seems,' replied the King; 'sit down, Gunther. I offer you beer and a most indifferent cheese.'

But Gunther would by no means sit down in the presence of an anointed king for one bidding.

'Ah, sire, it is proper that I should stand before you,' he said huskily, greatly excited.

'It is not at all proper when I tell you to be seated,' returned King Richard. So Gunther sat down and wiped his head, Richard finished his beer; and then they went to sleep on the floor. Early in the morning the prisoner woke up his gaoler.

'Come, Gunther,' he says, 'we had better take the road.'

'I am ready, sire,' says Gunther, manifestly unready. He rose and shook himself.

'Lead, then,' Richard said.

'I follow you, sire.'

'Lead, you white dog,' said the King, and showed his teeth for a moment.

The Austrian obeyed. One of Richard's few attendants, a Norman called Martin Vaux, adopted for his own salvation the simple expedient of staying behind; and Gunther was in far too exalted a mood to notice such a trifle. When he and his troop had rounded the forest road, Martin Vaux rounded it also, but in the opposite direction. He was rather a fool, though not fool enough to go to prison if he could help it. Being a seaman by grace, he smelt for his element, and by grace found it after not many days. More of him presently.

Archduke Luitpold was in his good town of Gratz when news was brought him, and the man. 'Du lieber Gott!' he crowed. 'Ach, mein Gunther!' and embraced his va.s.sal.

His fiery little eyes burned red, as Mars when he flickers; but he was a gentleman. He took Richard's proffered hand, and after some fumbling about, kissed it.

'Ha, sire!' came the words, deeply exultant, from his big throat. 'Now we are on more equal terms, it appears.'

'I agree with you, Luitpold,' said the King; and then, even as the Archduke was wetting his lips for the purpose, he added, 'But I hope you will not stretch your privilege so far as to make me a speech.'

Austria swallowed hard. 'Sire, it would take many speeches to wipe out the provocations I have received at your hands. All the speeches in the councils of the world could not excuse the deaths of my second cousin the Count of Saint-Pol and of my first cousin the Marquess of Montferrat.'

'That is true,' replied Richard, 'but neither could they restore them to life.'

'Sire, sire!' cried the Archduke, 'upon my soul I believe you guilty of the Marquess's death.'

'I a.s.sumed that you did,' was the King's answer; 'and your protestation adds no weight to my theory, but otherwise.'

'Do you admit it, King Richard?' The Archduke, an amazed man, looked foolish. His mouth fell open and his hair stuck out; this gave him the appearance of a perturbed eagle in a bush.

'I am far from denying it,' says Richard. 'I never deny any charges, and never make any unless I am prepared to pursue them; which is not the case at present.'

'I must keep you in safe hold, sire,' the Archduke said. 'I must communicate with my lord the Roman Emperor.'

'You are in your right, Luitpold,' said King Richard.