F. Marion Crawford

“ To Thy service and to the honour of Thy most sacred Cross, I dedicate this true man. Bless Thou this shield of his, that it may be between him and his enemies, and his arms, also, that he may go before our host, and save many, and lead us to Thy holy place in Jerusalem! Endue him with grace, fill him with strength, enlighten his heart. Hear me and help me, O Christ, a sinful, loving woman!
"Holy Spirit of God, Most High, Creator, Comforter, let Thy pure gifts descend upon this clean-hearted man, that his courage fail not in life, nor in the hour of death. ”

“ Again the Queen's cheek flushed.
"Your Grace leads the army of France," she said, "an army of brave men. My knights are many, and brave too, the troops of Guienne and of Poitou and of Gascony and of more than half of all the duchies that speak our tongue and owe me allegiance. But of them all, and before them all, to ride in van of this Holy War, I choose these three hundred ladies. My Lord King, and you, lords, barons, knights, and men, who have taken upon you the sign of the Cross, you, the flower of French chivalry and manhood, your comrades in arms are these, the flowers of France! ”

“ In the first moment of imperfect understanding, it was Arnold whom they were bringing home to her, slain in battle by her lawful husband, or by Gilbert, her son; it was Arnold whom they were bringing back to her who loved him, that she might wash his wounds with her tears, and dry his damp brow with her glorious hair. Wide-eyed and silent, as the train came near, she moved along by the moat to meet the procession at the drawbridge, not understanding yet, but not letting one movement of the men, one flicker of the lights, one quaver of the deep chant, escape her reeling senses. ”

“ She was not as his father was, dead in fact, but dead in honour. There he lay, as Gilbert had last looked upon his white face and stiff, mailed form, himself still, himself as he had been in life and as he was thereafter, in that place of peace and refreshment where brave men rest. In the quiet features was reflected forever the truth whereby his life had been lived; in the crossed hands upon the breast was the last outward symbol and sign of the simple faith that had been life's guide; in the strong, straight outlines of a strength splendid in death was the record of strong deeds well done. ”

“ Sitting there alone, while Dunstan puzzled his uncertain learning over deep-cut inscriptions of long ago, and Alric, the groom, threw his dagger at a mark on one of the cypress trees, hundreds of times in succession, and rarely missing his aim, Gilbert felt, in the silence he loved, that the soul of Rome had taken hold of his soul, and that in Rome it was good to live for the sake of dreaming, and that dreaming itself was life. The past, with his mother's sins, his own sorrows, the friendship of the boy Henry, the love of Queen Eleanor, were all infinitely far removed and dim. ”

“ Eleanor tried in vain to wrench the mare's head to one side, into the shrinking crowd.
The Queen's face turned grey, but her lips were set and her eyes steady, as she looked death in the face. Behind her, Beatrix's little gloved hands were like white moths on her steadily jerking bridle, the Hungarian's terrific stride threw up the sods behind her, and there was a hopeless, far-away look in her face, almost like a death-smile. Only the strong dark woman of the South seemed still to have control over her horse, and he slowly slackened his speed, and fell a little behind the other two. ”

“ Not all the cheering of the great army, not all the light in the thousands of eyes that followed her, could have done more than bring a faint colour to her face, nor could any man in all that host have found a word to make her heart beat faster. But when she saw Gilbert the blood sank suddenly and her eyes grew darker. They lingered on him as she rode by, and turned back to him a little with drooping lids, and a slight bend of the head that had in it a grace beyond her own knowledge or intention. ”

“ It is right that a loyal man should save his sovereign first. I do not blame him. I should not have blamed him had I been more hurt than I am."
"I am not his sovereign, and he is no vassal of mine." Eleanor smiled coldly. "He is an Englishman."
"You play with words," answered Beatrix, as she would have spoken to an equal.
"Take care!"
They faced each other, and on the instant the fierce pride of royalty sprang up, as at an insult. But Beatrix was brave—a sick girl against the Queen of France.
"If you are not his sovereign, you are not mine," she said. ”

“ Gilbert wandered through the crooked, unpaved streets, in and out of gloomy courts and over desolate wastes and open places, the haunts of ravenous dogs and homeless cats that kept themselves alive on the choice pickings of the city's garbage. He went armed and followed by his men, as he saw that other gentlemen of his condition did, and when he knelt in a church to hear mass or to say a prayer, he was careful to kneel with his back to the wall or to a pillar, lest some light-handed worshipper should set a razor to his wallet strings or his sword-belt. ”

“ Men were roused, and the times were ripe, but not until the Abbot of Clairvaux had given Europe the final impulse could the armies of the King and of the Queen, and of Conrad, who was never to be crowned Emperor in Rome, begin the march of desperate toil and weariness that lay between their homes and their death. From Vezelay the master preacher and inspirer of mankind went straight to Conrad's court, doing the will of others in faith and without misgiving of conscience, to the greater glory of God, yet haunted in sleep and waking by the dim ghosts of ruin and defeat. ”

“ The future, once the magic mirror in which he had seen displayed the glory of knightly deeds which he was to do, was taken up like a departing vision into the blue Roman sky. Only the present remained, the idle, thoughtful, half-narcotic present, with a mazy charm no man could explain, since so far as any bodily good was concerned there was less comfort to be got for money, more fever to be taken for nothing, and a larger element of danger in everyday life in Rome than in any city Gilbert had traversed in his wanderings. ”

“ She sighed and withdrew her hand from Eleanor's, as if by instinct. The Queen did not start, but for an instant her eyes gathered light into themselves and her mouth hardened. She glanced at the weak girl, broken and suffering, and looking so small beside her, and she was angry that Gilbert should have chosen anything so pitiful against her own lofty beauty. But presently her anger ceased, not because it was unopposed, but because she was too large-hearted for any meanness.
"Forget that I am the Queen," she said at last. "Only remember that I am a woman and that we two love one man." ”

“ March ye for Christ and to bring the people to Him out of darkness! Take with you the Cross to set it in the hearts of men, and the seed of the tree of life to plant among desolate nations!
"Ye kings, that are anointed leaders, lead ye the armies of Heaven! Ye knights, that are sworn to honour, draw your unsullied swords for the honour of God! Men and youths, that bear arms by allegiance, be ye soldiers of Christ and allegiant to the Cross! Be ye all first for honour, first for France, first for God Most High!" ”

“ I am but little better than a wanderer, disinherited of his own."
"And come you hither for the Pope's justice?" asked the friar, scornfully. "There is no Pope in Rome. Our last was killed at the head of a band of fighting men, on the slope of the Capitol, last year, and he who is Pope now is as much a wanderer as you and I. And in Rome we have a Republic and a Senate, and justice of a kind, but only for Romans, and claiming no dominion over mankind; for to be free means to set free, to live means to let live."
"I shall see what this freedom of yours is like," said Gilbert, thoughtfully. ”

“ Not being in any way confident of Gilbert's love herself, the girl she pitied and half liked was as much her rival as the most beautiful woman in Europe could have been. She was made up of strong contrasts—generous yet often unforgiving; strong as a man yet capricious as a child; tender as a woman, and then in turn sudden, fierce, and dangerous as a tigress.
Beatrix made a feeble gesture as if she would not be fanned by the hand that was against her, but the Queen paid no attention to the refusal. ”

“ There are plants which may be plucked up half-grown, before their roots have spread in the earth or their buds ripened to blossoming, and they may lie long in dry places till they seem withered and dead; but there is life in their fibres still, and the power to grow is in the shrivelled stem and in the dusty leaf, so that if they be planted again and tended they come at last to their due maturity. Gilbert and Beatrix might have lived out their lives apart, and in the course of years they would have been the merest memories to each other ”

“ He who stands at the edge of the limit, with a lifetime of good struggles behind him, may be as sad and hopeless as he who sits down and weeps before the mountain of untried beginnings. The joy of the earthly future is for the very great and the very little. For as charity leads mankind by faith to the hope of the life to come, so, on the mind's side, by faith in its own strength, the work of genius in the past is its own surety for like work to come.
Gilbert Warde was not of that great mould, but more human and less sure of himself ”

“ But when Bernard had ascended the white wooden stage and stood near the King and Queen, then the hushed stillness became a dead silence, and the eyes of all that multitude were fastened upon his face and form, as each could see him. For a moment every man held his breath as if an angel had come down from heaven, bringing on his lips the word of God and in his look the evidence of eternal light. He was the holy man of the world even while he lived, and neither before him nor after him, since the days of the Apostles, has any one person so stood in the eyes of all mankind. ”

“ Ear-piercing, wild, the cry of slaughter came up from the valley again and again, and worse sounds came now on the clear air, the howls of men pressed together and powerless, slain in hundreds with arrows and stones, and the unearthly shrieks of horses wounded to death.
"They are in thousands," said Gilbert, listening. "I must have more men."
"I give you my army," said Eleanor. ”

“ Gilbert, therefore, looked upon all bodily weariness and suffering and privation which he chanced to encounter on the march as so much penance to be borne cheerfully because it should profit his soul; and while the young blood coursed in his veins, and youth's bright lights danced in his eyes, the cold spirit of the ascetic fought against the warm life toward an end which the man felt rather than saw, and of which the profound melancholy would have appalled him, could he have realized it. ”

“ And Curboil, on his side, was not only flattered, as every man is when a beautiful woman listens to him long and intently, but he saw also that her beauty was of an unusual and very striking kind. Too straight, too cold, too much like marble, yet with hair almost too golden and a mouth like a small red wound; too much of every quality to be natural, and yet without fault or flaw, and too vivid not to delight the tired taste of the man of pleasure of that day, who had seen the world from London to Rome and from Rome to the imperial court of Henry the Fifth. ”

“ So when Dunstan opened his eyes and started up at seeing his master awake, Gilbert spoke to him.
"You have fought with me," he said, "you have endured with me, we have fasted together on the march, and we have drunk of the same spring in battle while the arrows fell about us, and now, God willing, we are to be brothers, when I wed the Lady Beatrix, and but for you I should be mourning by her grave to-day. It is not meet that we should be any longer master and man, for you have gentle blood in you, of a great house." ”

“ Beatrix laughed softly her little bird laugh that had the music of a spring day.
"If men knew—what?"
"If men knew—" She paused, and blushed, and laughed again. "If men knew how women love sweet words when they are happy, and sharp deeds when they are angry! That is what I mean. I would have given my blood and the Queen's kingdom for a kiss when you left me standing there."
"I wish I had known!" exclaimed Gilbert, happy but half perplexed. ”

“ Gilbert rested one hand against the wall and looked out, breathing the bright sea air with a sort of voluptuous enjoyment, and letting his thoughts wander as they would. The march had been long and full of hardships, mingled often with real bodily suffering, and those who had escaped without disease were reckoned fortunate. The war was still before them, but no imaginable combat with men could be compared with the long struggle for existence through which the Crusaders had won their way to Constantinople. ”

“ Among the French, there were many, both of the great lords and of the simple knights, and of poor men-at-arms, who would have counted it mortal sin to take anything from a stranger without payment, who had come for faith's sake, to fight for faith, and who looked for faith's reward. Yet as there can be in logic nothing good excepting by its own comparison with things evil, so in that great pilgrimage of arms the worst followed the best in a greedy throng, as the jackal and the raven cross the desert in the lion's track. ”

“ But Gilbert's great strokes flashed like lightnings from his pliant wrist, and behind the wrist was the Norman arm, and behind the arm the relentless pale face and the even lips, that just tightened upon each other as the deathblows went out, one by one, each to its place in a life. The Italian destroyed men skilfully and quickly, yet as if it were distasteful to him. The Norman slew like a bright destroying angel, breathing the swift and silent wrath of God upon mankind. ”

“ In an instant the flying Germans were forgotten; and the Emperor and his army, and the meaning of the Holy War and of the Cross itself, were gone from men's minds in the fury of riot on the one side, in the stern determination of defence on the other. The vast weight of men rolled forward, pushed by those behind, forcing the King and those who stood by him to higher ground. In dire distress, and almost hopeless of extricating her gentle troop from destruction, the Queen heard the new tumult far away, and felt the close press yielding on one side. ”

“ Under her hood, the Queen felt the warm blood in her cheeks. Gilbert was very good to see as he stood just outside the door, in the bright lamplight. He was pale, but not wan like Bernard; he was thin with the leanness of vigorous youth, not with fasting and vigils; he was grave, not sad; energetic, not inspired; and his face was handsome rather than beautiful. Eleanor looked at him for a few moments before she spoke again. ”

“ You should know, Master Gilbert, that a Plantagenet of thirteen years is the match of any other man of twenty. As I can beat you at tennis, though you are six years older than I, so I can beat you in other matters, and with the Queen herself, even though she is half in love with you already, as all the court is saying; and she shall belong to me some day, though I have to slay that dish-faced prayer-master of a king to get her. ”

“ But, to his great surprise, Beatrix seemed inclined to laugh at him.
"Where should we go?" she asked, refusing to leave her seat. "We should be caught before we reached the city gates, and it would be the worse for us."
"And who should dare touch us?" asked Gilbert, indignantly. "Who should dare to lay a hand on you?"
"You are strong and brave," answered Beatrix, "but you are not an army, and the Queen—but you will not believe what I say." ”

“ But then again, alone in his room at the Lion Inn, late in the night, when he had been poring over the beautifully written copy of Boethius, given him by the Abbot of Sheering, he often opened wide the wooden shutters of his window and looked out at the castle and at the flowing river that eddied and gleamed in the moonlight. Then life rose before him in a mystery for him to solve by deeds, and he knew that he was not to dream out his years in the shadowy city, and the strong old instinct of his race bade him go forth and cut his fortune out of the world's flank alive. ”

“ Reliant on herself and unaffectedly courageous, she often wondered whether it were not a more pleasant thing to be a man than to be even the fairest of womankind, as she was. She stood still a moment in the vestibule, drawing the hood of her cloak over her head and half across her face. The outer door was half open; the single lamp, filled with olive-oil and hanging from the middle of the vault, cast its ray out into the night. As Eleanor stood arranging her headdress and almost unconsciously looking toward the darkness, a gleam of colour and steel flashed softly in the gloom. ”