CHAPTER I
From the Roof of the World we led out our steeds, to follow the wind for a little play.
Where the banners of Islam were unfurled on the ramparts of Sarai.
Not for wall or door did we draw our reins, till the last of the banners were laid away,
And the shout of “Allah” was heard no more on the ramparts of Sarai.—The minstrel's song.
IT WAS a year of many omens. Lightning made the sign of the Cross in the sky, and meteors fell along the road to Jerusalem. When the dry season began, locusts came and destroyed the vineyards.
In that year, early in the thirteenth century of our Lord, the mailed host of the crusaders was idle. There was a truce between it and the Saracens who had reconquered Jerusalem and all of the cities of Palestine except the sea coast and the rich province of Antioch.
Before the truce the crusaders had suffered heavily in an attempt to take the port of Egypt, Damietta, and its triple wall. And the retreat over the desert to Ascalon had taken its further toll of the lives of peers and men-at-arms alike. Meanwhile, on three sides of the strip of sea coast, the Moslems gathered their power for the blow that would send the Croises back into the sea from which they had come.
So the omens were interpreted as a warning.
The veriest springald of a squire of dames, new come from Venice or Byzantium and gay with curled ringlets and striped hose, knew that the truce would not last. The older men-at-arms who had fought under the banner of Richard of England, a generation ago, shook their heads and spent their days in the taverns.
Why not? The omens were evil—so the monks said. And the truce had been arranged by the paynim Saracens—an interval before the storm. The monks also said, it is true, that the locusts had eaten the vineyards but had spared the corn, and that this was a warning to drunkards. But the older warriors preferred to drown thought in their wine cups.
In the great northern province of Antioch, the nobles took refuge from the heat of the dry season. Led by Hugo, marquis of Montserrat and lord of Antioch, they crossed the long valley of the Orontes and made their way to a castle on the western march, a stronghold in the hills where they might hunt and listen to the tales of minstrel and troubador.
ROBERT, castellan of Antioch, made his way out of a labyrinth of clay gullies and gave his bay charger the rein. A glance to right and left revealed no human being astir on the yellow desolation of sand over which he was passing to gain the thicket of reeds ahead.
These withered rushes, he knew, bordered the Orontes River, now low in its bed. The horse lengthened its stride as it scented the water, and Sir Robert urged it on with knee and voice. The bay was dark with sweat, for the knight had pushed on at a round pace since sun-up, when they left the last mud hovels of Port St. Simeon, and lost sight of the sea.
But they had still far to go before nightfall, and the valley of the Orontes was an ill place to linger—without a strong following of spears. And Sir Robert rode alone.
He had landed the day before at St. Simeon with his horse and little else. Two years ago he had been wounded in the Egyptian campaign and had been made prisoner by the Mamelukes at the wall of Damietta. It had taken many a month to arrange for his release, for among his enemies Sir Robert bore a name that set him apart from his fellows. By reason of the great sword he carried—a straight, tapering blade, a full four feet of blue steel—they called him Longsword.
And so did the minstrels name him when they made a song about him thereafter.
As he entered the rushes he drew rein sharply and turned in the saddle to stare down at a fresh trail that ran athwart the path he was following. Many a man would have passed it by with a casual glance. But the castellan had been born in the hills that towered over Antioch, and he knew the sandy wastes of the Orontes as his father before him had known the courtyard of an earl's hold in England.
The trail was a narrow one, yet possibly a hundred horses had passed over it. The tracks were made by unshod hoofs, so the riders must have come in from the desert. And they had kept to the rushes instead of the main path, higher up where the clay was firmer.
They had wished to hide their tracks as far as possible, yet they had chosen a route in the open where they would be easily observed, unless—the castellan fancied they had traveled at night.
He would have liked to follow the trail. But a sound from the heights he had just left caused him to glance up quickly. The faint drumming of hoofs was unmistakable. An arrow's flight distant he noticed dust rising above the red clay ridges that lined the gullies.
Waiting long enough to be sure that only one rider was coming after him, he put the bay at the ford and crossed over the river, restraining the horse from stopping to drink. Nor did he look back as he rode slowly up the far bank.
Entering a dense growth of gray tamarisk, higher than the crest of his helm, Sir Robert halted and wheeled his horse to face the back trail where it turned sharply. Pulling the long, triangular shield from its loop over his shoulder, he slid his left arm through its bands and took his sword in his right.
Sir Robert smiled, and his gray eyes, under the steel of the helm, lighted with pleasure. The day's ride, that had been dull and hot until now, promised entertainment.
When he heard hoofs thudding softly over the sand he pricked the flanks of the bay with his spurs and the two horses met shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the tamarisks. And the castellan, leaning forward, thrust the top of his shield over the stranger's sword hilt, gripping the weapon in the fingers of his left hand.
The other rider was not slow to act. A twist of the reins, and his horse lunged aside. But the weapon, held by Sir Robert under the shield, slipped from its scabbard and remained in the hand of the knight.
“Ma kaharani!” said the stranger under his breath. “And what now?”
He was a man gray-haired and massive of limb, clad in splendor of embroidered vest and kaftan, and his brown eyes were shrewd. A Moslem by his garments and turban, yet a Moslem who did not sit in the saddle like a Turk or Arab.
Slung over his shoulder, instead of a shield, was a lute. Behind his saddle, a prayer rug. Sir Robert thought him to be a wandering minstrel.
“Your name!” he demanded, for he ever liked plain words.
Arabic came easily to his tongue, as he had been raised among his father's slaves.
“I am Abdullah ibn Khar, the teller of tales, the cup-companion of the emperor.”
The castellan considered him and saw that he was not afraid, though disarmed. The horse Abdullah bestrode was a remarkably fine one, a black Kabuli stallion.
“When does a minstrel of Islam follow the shadow of a Nazarene?” Sir Robert asked curtly.
The white teeth of the stranger flashed through the black tangle of his beard.
“Wallah! You ride with a loose rein. Surely a penned tiger is kin to the young warrior who is freed from camp. Not otherwise was I, in another day. To a woman or a battle, a man should ride boldly.”
“And you?”
“I followed to see your face.”
He studied the dark features of the Norman, the thin, down-curving nose and the powerful neck. Sir Robert had his mother's hair of tawny gold that fell to the mail coif on his shoulders. The hot temper of his race was his, yet the quiet, as well, of those who have great physical strength.
“Aye, a woman could summon you across the Orontes,” nodded the minstrel, “if you chose to come. A battle is another thing. Are you the palladin of the Franks—the Longsword?”
“Aye, so.”
“In the village by the sea a saddle-maker pointed you out and said that you were he, although many thought you dead. So I found my horse and sought you, for company on the road. There is a truce between our peoples.”
“So that your spies may enter our walls.”
“And your great lords may hawk and dice at leisure. Many things have I seen—your men-at-arms picking their noses, having no better thing to do—your king holding court on an island, because his foes can not ride over the paths of the sea. Yet I have not seen a leopard change his skin, nor a spy look otherwise than faithless. Allah kerim! Do I look like a pryer?”
Sir Robert thought that the man was bold enough. The horse under his hand might have been the gift of an ameer.
“You do not look like a minstrel,” he laughed.
The man's words rang unpleasantly true. The Christian barons spent their days in bickering with each other. They were a weaker breed than the first crusaders who had fought their way over the desert to Jerusalem aid left their bones in the land they conquered. Venetians, Genoese, Bavarians and French—the new lords were more apt at gleaning profit from trade than at defending the fiefs they held.
In the last years the men who had been the heroes of Sir Robert's childhood had passed elsewhere, some stricken by the plague, some thrust into the torture chambers of the neighboring Saracens. Others had sailed back to the courts of Europe.
Now the galleys brought to Palestine disorderly throngs of pilgrims who were more than willing to pay a fee to the Saracens to visit the Sepulcher and bear away a palm.
This troubled Sir Robert, who had known no other land, and no fellowship other than that of the Croises.
While he mused Abdullah had been studying his face. Now the minstrel leaned down swiftly and caught up a fistful of sand.
“My lord,” he said, “I can read what passes in your mind. Who can change a book that is written, if that book be fate? No one among the Franks can keep Palestine for long, and your people will go again upon the sea whence they came. And their empire will pass—so!”
He loosed his fingers, letting fall the sand, and the castellan started.
“In the Fiend's name, mummer, did you ride from the sea to tell me this?”
“Nay, am I a fool?”
Abdullah's thick chest rumbled with laughter.
“I sought the Longsword, and I found a youngling,” he added. “Did you, in truth, hold the wall of Antioch against Nasr-ud-deen and his spears?”
“Now that you have found me, seek another with your tricks. I have no largess to give.”
Abdullah glanced reflectively at the castellan's faded surcoat and weather-stained shield from which the armorial device had long since been battered out.
“Largess, my lord, awaits me in the hall of Montserrat, whither I think you draw your reins—unless,” he added gravely, “you fear to have Abdullah for refik—companion on the road.”
Robert frowned and tossed the Moslem his simitar.
“Go where you will, knave!”
Turning the bay aside, he passed by the minstrel and let his horse go down to the river to drink. Meanwhile his glance swept the Orontes and the bare, red hills that pressed down upon it, for signs of other riders who might have followed Abdullah, and lain concealed during the talk. But the far side of the river, shimmering through the heat haze, was empty of life.
Abdullah had followed his example, and when the stallion had lifted its fine head to let the water run out between its teeth, he turned in the saddle.
“Will the lord grant one boon to his servant? Your word that I shall not be harmed by the Nazarenes at Montserrat?”
Robert shook his head. He had been taught by his father never to break his word, whether given to a Moslem or one of his own peers. Abdullah, however, seemed satisfied with this response, and rode ahead up the trail of his own accord.
They had no more than entered the tamarisks again, when both reined to a halt, and the horses fidgeted. From up the hill loud voices drew nearer, with a clattering of iron, a yapping of dogs, a braying of asses and a creaking of wheels that made a small bedlam of the quiet of the valley.
FROM between the gray bushes emerged a gaunt man, stumbling under the weight of a tall banner of soiled samite upon which was embroidered a crimson cross. On his heels tramped a throng ragged and filthy, living scarecrows with feverish eyes.
Drawing aside from the trail, Robert watched the company pass. Some carried bundles slung to pike or staff—bundles that jingled and clanked, spoil beyond a doubt snatched from some native village. Many lay sick in the lumbering ox carts, and a leper walked alone at a cart tail, his bell clinking when he stumbled.
In another araba lay a woman, suckling a child scarcely a month old. A lad whose only garment was a torn shirt peered up through the dust at the knight and the minstrel.
“Good my lord, is't far to Jerusalem?”
“Too far for a springald such as you,” Robert responded gruffly. “What company is this?”
The boy pointed proudly to the red cross sewn on his shirt.
“Messire,” he piped, “I am from Provence, like the demoiselle herself. We heard the blessed de Courgon preach, and we are come to deliver the city of Christ out of paynim duress.”
He trotted on, and an English yeoman in green jerkin and feathered hood stopped to scowl blackly at Abdullah, and spit.
“A murrain upon yon infidel! When we set forth we e'en had forty thousand such as that”—nodding after the boy—“and now, by the shadow of , we have but two. Aye, he and the lass.”
“'s wounds!” cried Robert. “Was this a crusade of the children?”
“Ah, that it was, tall my lord! Verily the mob did betake itself to divers paths from Byzantium, some adventuring upon the sea—and St. Giles and St. Dunstan ha' mercy on them—some upon the coast, where they did fall to quarreling and warring with the Armenians, and are no better this day than crow's meat, drying i' the wind. Our company was five hundred strong when we left Byzantium behind. And now ” He leaned on his staff and jerked a thumb at the rear of the party. The pilgrims numbered no more than fivescore.
“A black malison on the infidels, say I.”
Robert wondered who the lass of this array might be, but just then some dozen men began to crowd around Abdullah, cursing him and fingering the axes at their belts. Some one flung a stone that made the black horse rear, the minstrel keeping his seat in the saddle with easy grace.
“Salvation awaits him who sheds the blood of a Saracen!” cried a giant with a pocked face.
“Seize his horse for Father Evagrius!” suggested another.
“Send him to pare the 's hoofs!”
Taking up his reins, Robert urged the bay between the angry throng and his companion. Whatever the mission upon which Abdullah of Khar had been sent, the man was of gentle blood, and the nobles of Palestine had sworn a truce with the Moslems, giving hand and glove upon it. This oath Robert felt to be binding unless the enemy broke the truce.
“Back, ribalds,” he commanded. “Pass on. This is a minstrel who rides with me.”
The mob seemed made up of villains, of commoners, and the knight did not feel called upon to voice reasons for his action to them. As some men in rusty haburgeons drew their swords, he rose in his stirrups to peer through the dust.
“Ho, the leader of this pack! The chief of these rogues, I say—call hence your varlets or it will be the worse for them.”
At this the throng parted, and an old priest rode up on a white donkey led by a young girl. Flinging back the hood of her gown, she looked up angrily at Robert.
“Messire! Unsay what you have said, and that without ado.”
She took the charger's rein in a gloved hand, and stamped a slender foot angrily and a little awkwardly, for it was clad in an Armenian red leather boot several sizes too large. Robert glimpsed a white face pinched by hunger and eyes shadowed by ripples of hair dark as a raven's wing.
“This is our patriarch, Sir Lout,” went on the maid in a clear voice, “and Father Evagrius is blind. Climb down from your big horse and kneel and ask his pardon and blessing.”
“Nay, Ellen,” put in the patriarch, “it is not seemly that a stranger and a man-at-arms should kneel”
“I say he shall! Nay, he is no sergeant-at-arms but a spurred lordling. His companion is a black-browed Moslem, and surely that is not seemly.”
Against the crowd of grease- and vermin-ridden men the slight figure of the maid stood out in bold relief. The pulse throbbed in her delicate throat, and the circles darkened under her eyes that blazed with the tensity of long suffering. Abdullah glanced from her to Robert with some amusement.
“Father Evagrius,” observed the knight, “if you are verily the leader of this company you do ill to turn your back on the castle of Montserrat. The river is scarce a safe abiding-place.”
“Messire,” responded the maid Ellen quickly, “the lord of Montserrat hath seen fit to order us away from his hold to the river.”
“How? His Grace, the marquis”
“—doth lack of courtesy, even as you. Perchance he feared lest the ribalds trample his coverts or disturb the sleep of his hunting-hounds.”
“Demoiselle,” explained Robert calmly, “I am the vassal of Hugo of Montserrat, and even now I seek his hold, above in the border mountain chain. And I do maintain that he would not send a Christian company into hazard of their lives.”
“Sir Stiff-and-Stuffy, I do maintain that your Hugo hath turned us off.”
While Robert stared at her, perplexed, yet finding an unexpected pleasure in meeting the glance of a girl of his own race after years spent without sight of a woman, he heard the gentle voice of the priest.
“The good marquis hath given his word that he will protect us against all foes upon his marches. And the Orontes, where we will pass the night, doth lie within his border.”
“Then are you safe,” nodded Robert. “Montserrat, having given his pledge, will keep it.”
“And now, Sir Vassal,” added the girl Ellen, “do you kneel to the patriarch. Ah, he is a very saint, and his spirit dwells near to the throne of God—Whom you miscalled a moment ago.”
Robert, looking down upon her youthful rage—the maid scarce numbered more than fifteen years—tried in vain to stifle a hearty laugh. At this she flushed from throat to eyes and slipped off the hawking gauntlet upon her hand. Standing on her toes, she struck him swiftly across the lips.
The force of the blow knocked the glove from her grasp. Robert swung down from his stirrup and picked it up. When he stepped toward her she did not draw back, but clenched thin hands and stood her ground. Her followers, who had time to take in Robert's spread of shoulder and the length of his sword, made no move to molest him—though he paid no heed to them.
“I give you back your glove, demoiselle,” he said, smiling at her boldness. “And I would that you and the good father would turn back with me to Montserrat.”
“You mock us! Never—we would never go with you.”
“By the saints! I meant no ill to you or the blind priest,” denied the knight gravely.
“Come, Ellen,” said Evagrius, “you have delayed our march, and I feel that the sun is sinking near the earth. A week from this hour we shall bathe in the Jordan, and you shall see the Mount of Olives.”
His lined face was lighted by inward rejoicing as he felt for the donkey's halter. But the girl bent her head, and Robert heard her sob as she moved away. Frowning, he watched them pass into the dust cloud.
Why, he wondered, had the maid wept? Surely there was pride in her, and gentleness, for she tended the helpless Evagrius.
“Yah refik,” observed Abdullah, “you know little of a woman's spirit. That was a comely child and—I had fancied, lord, that you rode in such haste to meet with a woman.”
“There are none in the castle we seek.”
“Wallah! Can it be?”
He looked more than a little skeptical, yet the other's response appeared to give him satisfaction. As they passed up into the rocky gorges of the foot-hills Abdullah swung his lute around to his saddle-peak and began to sweep his fingers across the strings, chanting in his fine voice.
He sang of the joy of racing the stag over the hills, and of watching the falcon stoop, and of wandering under the dome of the stars. Robert, harkening despite himself, felt the magic of the other's gift of song. In his mind's vision he went back to boyhood, riding with his father over the desert floor, calling to stag-hounds. He knew again the thrill of loosing a hawk against the mid-day sky, and the cheer of the fire when the hunt was done and the wine-cup made the rounds.
Abdullah sang on, and Robert's memory changed to the days of stark hunger when a Moslem city was beleaguered; he watched the men fashioning great mangonels and massive siege towers—for he had been taught the arts of the siege engines when most boys were playing at jousting.
Lean years thronged into his mind. Years spent in the saddle with the nucleus of the mailed host that had struggled to keep the banner of the Croises upon the walls of Jerusalem. Days of hideous din, when streets under the eyes of the lad had run with blood until the very bodies were washed into the gutters.
As the minstrel sang on, he felt a restlessness in his veins. A craving to wander, as he had often done with his comrades, beyond the border and try his strength against foes.
“Faith!” he cried, spurring on the big bay. “We loiter apace.”
Abdullah put aside his lute and brought up the black stallion, bridle to bridle.
“Aforetime,” he observed, “I made that song for my master, who is master of all men.”
Robert did not ask him who this might be, because at that moment they heard rising from the depths behind and below them a hum of human voices.
“Te Deum laudamus. We praise Thee, O Lord—we praise and magnify Thee forever.”
It was the chant of the pilgrims, who were visible only as a thin line of dust moving into the maw of the Orontes, where, the network of gorges was shadowed by the early sunset in royal purple, the pinnacles crowned with red and gold. The two men paused to look back.
“See, how Allah hath hung in the sky the crimson banners of death,” remarked Abdullah. “And we—who knows what days are before us?”