Now change the scene--and let the trumpets sound,
For we must rouse the lion from his lair. OLD PLAY.
The scene must change, as our programme has announced, from the mountain
wilderness of Jordan to the camp of King Richard of England, then
stationed betwixt Jean d'Acre and Ascalon, and containing that army with
which he of the lion heart had promised himself a triumphant march
to Jerusalem, and in which he would probably have succeeded, if not
hindered by the jealousies of the Christian princes engaged in the same
enterprise, and the offence taken by them at the uncurbed haughtiness
of the English monarch, and Richard's unveiled contempt for his brother
sovereigns, who, his equals in rank, were yet far his inferiors
in courage, hardihood, and military talents. Such discords, and
particularly those betwixt Richard and Philip of France, created
disputes and obstacles which impeded every active measure proposed by
the heroic though impetuous Richard, while the ranks of the Crusaders
were daily thinned, not only by the desertion of individuals, but of
entire bands, headed by their respective feudal leaders, who withdrew
from a contest in which they had ceased to hope for success.
The effects of the climate became, as usual, fatal to soldiers from
the north, and the more so that the dissolute license of the Crusaders,
forming a singular contrast to the principles and purpose of their
taking up arms, rendered them more easy victims to the insalubrious
influence of burning heat and chilling dews. To these discouraging
causes of loss was to be added the sword of the enemy. Saladin, than
whom no greater name is recorded in Eastern history, had learned, to
his fatal experience, that his light-armed followers were little able to
meet in close encounter with the iron-clad Franks, and had been taught,
at the same time, to apprehend and dread the adventurous character of
his antagonist Richard. But if his armies were more than once routed
with great slaughter, his numbers gave the Saracen the advantage in
those lighter skirmishes, of which many were inevitable.
As the army of his assailants decreased, the enterprises of the Sultan
became more numerous and more bold in this species of petty warfare. The
camp of the Crusaders was surrounded, and almost besieged, by clouds of
light cavalry, resembling swarms of wasps, easily crushed when they are
once grasped, but furnished with wings to elude superior strength, and
stings to inflict harm and mischief. There was perpetual warfare of
posts and foragers, in which many valuable lives were lost, without
any corresponding object being gained; convoys were intercepted, and
communications were cut off. The Crusaders had to purchase the means
of sustaining life, by life itself; and water, like that of the well of
Bethlehem, longed for by King David, one of its ancient monarchs, was
then, as before, only obtained by the expenditure of blood.
These evils were in a great measure counterbalanced by the stern
resolution and restless activity of King Richard, who, with some of his
best knights, was ever on horseback, ready to repair to any point where
danger occurred, and often not only bringing unexpected succour to the
Christians, but discomfiting the infidels when they seemed most secure
of victory. But even the iron frame of Coeur de Lion could not support
without injury the alternations of the unwholesome climate, joined to
ceaseless exertions of body and mind. He became afflicted with one of
those slow and wasting fevers peculiar to Asia, and in despite of his
great strength and still greater courage, grew first unfit to mount on
horseback, and then unable to attend the councils of war which were from
time to time held by the Crusaders. It was difficult to say whether this
state of personal inactivity was rendered more galling or more endurable
to the English monarch by the resolution of the council to engage in a
truce of thirty days with the Sultan Saladin; for on the one hand, if he
was incensed at the delay which this interposed to the progress of the
great enterprise, he was, on the other, somewhat consoled by knowing
that others were not acquiring laurels while he remained inactive upon a
sick-bed.
That, however, which Coeur de Lion could least excuse was the general
inactivity which prevailed in the camp of the Crusaders so soon as his
illness assumed a serious aspect; and the reports which he extracted
from his unwilling attendants gave him to understand that the hopes of
the host had abated in proportion to his illness, and that the interval
of truce was employed, not in recruiting their numbers, reanimating
their courage, fostering their spirit of conquest, and preparing for a
speedy and determined advance upon the Holy City, which was the
object of their expedition, but in securing the camp occupied by their
diminished followers with trenches, palisades, and other fortifications,
as if preparing rather to repel an attack from a powerful enemy so soon
as hostilities should recommence, than to assume the proud character of
conquerors and assailants.
The English king chafed under these reports, like the imprisoned lion
viewing his prey from the iron barriers of his cage. Naturally rash
and impetuous, the irritability of his temper preyed on itself. He was
dreaded by his attendants and even the medical assistants feared to
assume the necessary authority which a physician, to do justice to his
patient, must needs exercise over him. One faithful baron, who, perhaps,
from the congenial nature of his disposition, was devoutly attached to
the King's person, dared alone to come between the dragon and his wrath,
and quietly, but firmly, maintained a control which no other dared
assume over the dangerous invalid, and which Thomas de Multon only
exercised because he esteemed his sovereign's life and honour more than
he did the degree of favour which he might lose, or even the risk
which he might incur, in nursing a patient so intractable, and whose
displeasure was so perilous.
Sir Thomas was the Lord of Gilsland, in Cumberland, and in an age
when surnames and titles were not distinctly attached, as now, to the
individuals who bore them, he was called by the Normans the Lord de
Vaux; and in English by the Saxons, who clung to their native language,
and were proud of the share of Saxon blood in this renowned warrior's
veins, he was termed Thomas, or, more familiarly, Thom of the Gills,
or Narrow Valleys, from which his extensive domains derived their
well-known appellation.
This chief had been exercised in almost all the wars, whether waged
betwixt England and Scotland, or amongst the various domestic factions
which then tore the former country asunder, and in all had been
distinguished, as well from his military conduct as his personal
prowess. He was, in other respects, a rude soldier, blunt and careless
in his bearing, and taciturn--nay, almost sullen--in his habits of
society, and seeming, at least, to disclaim all knowledge of policy and
of courtly art. There were men, however, who pretended to look deeply
into character, who asserted that the Lord de Vaux was not less shrewd
and aspiring than he was blunt and bold, and who thought that, while he
assimilated himself to the king's own character of blunt hardihood, it
was, in some degree at least, with an eye to establish his favour, and
to gratify his own hopes of deep-laid ambition. But no one cared to
thwart his schemes, if such he had, by rivalling him in the dangerous
occupation of daily attendance on the sick-bed of a patient whose
disease was pronounced infectious, and more especially when it was
remembered that the patient was Coeur de Lion, suffering under all the
furious impatience of a soldier withheld from battle, and a sovereign
sequestered from authority; and the common soldiers, at least in the
English army, were generally of opinion that De Vaux attended on
the King like comrade upon comrade, in the honest and disinterested
frankness of military friendship contracted between the partakers of
daily dangers.
It was on the decline of a Syrian day that Richard lay on his couch of
sickness, loathing it as much in mind as his illness made it irksome to
his body. His bright blue eye, which at all times shone with uncommon
keenness and splendour, had its vivacity augmented by fever and mental
impatience, and glanced from among his curled and unshorn locks of
yellow hair as fitfully and as vividly as the last gleams of the sun
shoot through the clouds of an approaching thunderstorm, which still,
however, are gilded by its beams. His manly features showed the
progress of wasting illness, and his beard, neglected and untrimmed,
had overgrown both lips and chin. Casting himself from side to side, now
clutching towards him the coverings, which at the next moment he flung
as impatiently from him, his tossed couch and impatient gestures showed
at once the energy and the reckless impatience of a disposition whose
natural sphere was that of the most active exertion.
Beside his couch stood Thomas de Vaux, in face, attitude, and manner
the strongest possible contrast to the suffering monarch. His stature
approached the gigantic, and his hair in thickness might have resembled
that of Samson, though only after the Israelitish champion's locks had
passed under the shears of the Philistines, for those of De Vaux were
cut short, that they might be enclosed under his helmet. The light of
his broad, large hazel eye resembled that of the autumn morn; and it was
only perturbed for a moment, when from time to time it was attracted by
Richard's vehement marks of agitation and restlessness. His features,
though massive like his person, might have been handsome before they
were defaced with scars; his upper lip, after the fashion of the
Normans, was covered with thick moustaches, which grew so long and
luxuriantly as to mingle with his hair, and, like his hair, were dark
brown, slightly brindled with grey. His frame seemed of that kind which
most readily defies both toil and climate, for he was thin-flanked,
broad-chested, long-armed, deep-breathed, and strong-limbed. He had not
laid aside his buff-coat, which displayed the cross cut on the shoulder,
for more than three nights, enjoying but such momentary repose as the
warder of a sick monarch's couch might by snatches indulge. This Baron
rarely changed his posture, except to administer to Richard the medicine
or refreshments which none of his less favoured attendants could
persuade the impatient monarch to take; and there was something
affecting in the kindly yet awkward manner in which he discharged
offices so strangely contrasted with his blunt and soldierly habits and
manners.
The pavilion in which these personages were, had, as became the time,
as well as the personal character of Richard, more of a warlike than a
sumptuous or royal character. Weapons offensive and defensive, several
of them of strange and newly-invented construction, were scattered about
the tented apartment, or disposed upon the pillars which supported it.
Skins of animals slain in the chase were stretched on the ground, or
extended along the sides of the pavilion; and upon a heap of
these silvan spoils lay three ALANS, as they were then called
(wolf-greyhounds, that is), of the largest size, and as white as snow.
Their faces, marked with many a scar from clutch and fang, showed their
share in collecting the trophies upon which they reposed; and their
eyes, fixed from time to time with an expressive stretch and yawn upon
the bed of Richard, evinced how much they marvelled at and regretted the
unwonted inactivity which they were compelled to share. These were but
the accompaniments of the soldier and huntsman; but on a small table
close by the bed was placed a shield of wrought steel, of triangular
form, bearing the three lions passant first assumed by the chivalrous
monarch, and before it the golden circlet, resembling much a ducal
coronet, only that it was higher in front than behind, which, with
the purple velvet and embroidered tiara that lined it, formed then the
emblem of England's sovereignty. Beside it, as if prompt for defending
the regal symbol, lay a mighty curtal-axe, which would have wearied the
arm of any other than Coeur de Lion.
In an outer partition of the pavilion waited two or three officers of
the royal household, depressed, anxious for their master's health, and
not less so for their own safety, in case of his decease. Their gloomy
apprehensions spread themselves to the warders without, who paced about
in downcast and silent contemplation, or, resting on their halberds,
stood motionless on their post, rather like armed trophies than living
warriors.
“So thou hast no better news to bring me from without, Sir Thomas!”
said the King, after a long and perturbed silence, spent in the feverish
agitation which we have endeavoured to describe. “All our knights turned
women, and our ladies become devotees, and neither a spark of valour nor
of gallantry to enlighten a camp which contains the choicest of Europe's
chivalry--ha!”
“The truce, my lord,” said De Vaux, with the same patience with which
he had twenty times repeated the explanation--“the truce prevents us
bearing ourselves as men of action; and for the ladies, I am no great
reveller, as is well known to your Majesty, and seldom exchange steel
and buff for velvet and gold--but thus far I know, that our choicest
beauties are waiting upon the Queen's Majesty and the Princess, to a
pilgrimage to the convent of Engaddi, to accomplish their vows for your
Highness's deliverance from this trouble.”
“And is it thus,” said Richard, with the impatience of indisposition,
“that royal matrons and maidens should risk themselves, where the dogs
who defile the land have as little truth to man as they have faith
towards God?”
“Nay, my lord,” said De Vaux, “they have Saladin's word for their
safety.”
“True, true!” replied Richard; “and I did the heathen Soldan
injustice--I owe him reparation for it. Would God I were but fit
to offer it him upon my body between the two hosts--Christendom and
heathenesse both looking on!”
As Richard spoke, he thrust his right arm out of bed naked to the
shoulder, and painfully raising himself in his couch, shook his clenched
hand, as if it grasped sword or battle-axe, and was then brandished over
the jewelled turban of the Soldan. It was not without a gentle degree of
violence, which the King would scarce have endured from another, that
De Vaux, in his character of sick-nurse, compelled his royal master
to replace himself in the couch, and covered his sinewy arm, neck, and
shoulders with the care which a mother bestows upon an impatient child.
“Thou art a rough nurse, though a willing one, De Vaux,” said the King,
laughing with a bitter expression, while he submitted to the strength
which he was unable to resist; “methinks a coif would become thy
lowering features as well as a child's biggin would beseem mine. We
should be a babe and nurse to frighten girls with.”
“We have frightened men in our time, my liege,” said De Vaux; “and, I
trust, may live to frighten them again. What is a fever-fit, that we
should not endure it patiently, in order to get rid of it easily?”
“Fever-fit!” exclaimed Richard impetuously; “thou mayest think, and
justly, that it is a fever-fit with me; but what is it with all the
other Christian princes--with Philip of France, with that dull Austrian,
with him of Montserrat, with the Hospitallers, with the Templars--what
is it with all them? I will tell thee. It is a cold palsy, a dead
lethargy, a disease that deprives them of speech and action, a canker
that has eaten into the heart of all that is noble, and chivalrous, and
virtuous among them--that has made them false to the noblest vow ever
knights were sworn to--has made them indifferent to their fame, and
forgetful of their God!”
“For the love of Heaven, my liege,” said De Vaux, “take it less
violently--you will be heard without doors, where such speeches are but
too current already among the common soldiery, and engender discord and
contention in the Christian host. Bethink you that your illness mars the
mainspring of their enterprise; a mangonel will work without screw and
lever better than the Christian host without King Richard.”
“Thou flatterest me, De Vaux,” said Richard, and not insensible to
the power of praise, he reclined his head on the pillow with a more
deliberate attempt to repose than he had yet exhibited. But Thomas
de Vaux was no courtier; the phrase which had offered had risen
spontaneously to his lips, and he knew not how to pursue the pleasing
theme so as to soothe and prolong the vein which he had excited. He was
silent, therefore, until, relapsing into his moody contemplations, the
King demanded of him sharply, “Despardieux! This is smoothly said to
soothe a sick man; but does a league of monarchs, an assemblage or
nobles, a convocation of all the chivalry of Europe, droop with the
sickness of one man, though he chances to be King of England? Why
should Richard's illness, or Richard's death, check the march of thirty
thousand men as brave as himself? When the master stag is struck down,
the herd do not disperse upon his fall; when the falcon strikes the
leading crane, another takes the guidance of the phalanx. Why do not
the powers assemble and choose some one to whom they may entrust the
guidance of the host?”
“Forsooth, and if it please your Majesty,” said De Vaux, “I hear
consultations have been held among the royal leaders for some such
purpose.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Richard, his jealousy awakened, giving his mental
irritation another direction, “am I forgot by my allies ere I have taken
the last sacrament? Do they hold me dead already? But no, no, they are
right. And whom do they select as leader of the Christian host?”
“Rank and dignity,” said De Vaux, “point to the King of France.”
“Oh, ay,” answered the English monarch, “Philip of France and
Navarre--Denis Mountjoie--his most Christian Majesty! Mouth-filling
words these! There is but one risk--that he might mistake the words EN
ARRIERE for EN AVANT, and lead us back to Paris, instead of marching to
Jerusalem. His politic head has learned by this time that there is more
to be gotten by oppressing his feudatories, and pillaging his allies,
than fighting with the Turks for the Holy Sepulchre.”
“They might choose the Archduke of Austria,” said De Vaux.
“What! because he is big and burly like thyself, Thomas--nearly as
thick-headed, but without thy indifference to danger and carelessness
of offence? I tell thee that Austria has in all that mass of flesh no
bolder animation than is afforded by the peevishness of a wasp and the
courage of a wren. Out upon him! He a leader of chivalry to deeds
of glory! Give him a flagon of Rhenish to drink with his besmirched
baaren-hauters and lance-knechts.”
“There is the Grand Master of the Templars,” continued the baron, not
sorry to keep his master's attention engaged on other topics than his
own illness, though at the expense of the characters of prince and
potentate. “There is the Grand Master of the Templars,” he continued,
“undaunted, skilful, brave in battle, and sage in council, having no
separate kingdoms of his own to divert his exertions from the recovery
of the Holy Land--what thinks your Majesty of the Master as a general
leader of the Christian host?”
“Ha, Beau-Seant?” answered the King. “Oh, no exception can be taken to
Brother Giles Amaury; he understands the ordering of a battle, and the
fighting in front when it begins. But, Sir Thomas, were it fair to take
the Holy Land from the heathen Saladin, so full of all the virtues which
may distinguish unchristened man, and give it to Giles Amaury, a worse
pagan than himself, an idolater, a devil-worshipper, a necromancer, who
practises crimes the most dark and unnatural in the vaults and secret
places of abomination and darkness?”
“The Grand Master of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem is not
tainted by fame, either with heresy or magic,” said Thomas de Vaux.
“But is he not a sordid miser?” said Richard hastily; “has he not been
suspected--ay, more than suspected--of selling to the infidels those
advantages which they would never have won by fair force? Tush, man,
better give the army to be made merchandise of by Venetian skippers and
Lombardy pedlars, than trust it to the Grand Master of St. John.”
“Well, then, I will venture but another guess,” said the Baron de Vaux.
“What say you to the gallant Marquis of Montserrat, so wise, so elegant,
such a good man-at-arms?”
“Wise?--cunning, you would say,” replied Richard; “elegant in a lady's
chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat--who knows not the
popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as
often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall never be able to
guess the hue of his inmost vestments from their outward colours. A
man-at-arms? Ay, a fine figure on horseback, and can bear him well in
the tilt-yard, and at the barriers, when swords are blunted at point
and edge, and spears are tipped with trenchers of wood instead of steel
pikes. Wert thou not with me when I said to that same gay Marquis, 'Here
we be, three good Christians, and on yonder plain there pricks a band of
some threescore Saracens--what say you to charge them briskly? There are
but twenty unbelieving miscreants to each true knight.”
“I recollect the Marquis replied,” said De Vaux, “that his limbs were
of flesh, not of iron, and that he would rather bear the heart of a
man than of a beast, though that beast were the lion, But I see how
it is--we shall end where we began, without hope of praying at the
Sepulchre until Heaven shall restore King Richard to health.”
At this grave remark Richard burst out into a hearty fit of laughter,
the first which he had for some time indulged in. “Why what a thing is
conscience,” he said, “that through its means even such a thick-witted
northern lord as thou canst bring thy sovereign to confess his folly!
It is true that, did they not propose themselves as fit to hold my
leading-staff, little should I care for plucking the silken trappings
off the puppets thou hast shown me in succession. What concerns it me
what fine tinsel robes they swagger in, unless when they are named as
rivals in the glorious enterprise to which I have vowed myself? Yes,
De Vaux, I confess my weakness, and the wilfulness of my ambition. The
Christian camp contains, doubtless, many a better knight than Richard of
England, and it would be wise and worthy to assign to the best of them
the leading of the host. But,” continued the warlike monarch, raising
himself in his bed, and shaking the cover from his head, while his eyes
sparkled as they were wont to do on the eve of battle, “were such a
knight to plant the banner of the Cross on the Temple of Jerusalem while
I was unable to bear my share in the noble task, he should, so soon as I
was fit to lay lance in rest, undergo my challenge to mortal combat,
for having diminished my fame, and pressed in before to the object of my
enterprise. But hark, what trumpets are those at a distance?”
“Those of King Philip, as I guess, my liege,” said the stout Englishman.
“Thou art dull of ear, Thomas,” said the King, endeavouring to start up;
“hearest thou not that clash and clang? By Heaven, the Turks are in the
camp--I hear their LELIES.” [The war-cries of the Moslemah.]
He again endeavoured to get out of bed, and De Vaux was obliged to
exercise his own great strength, and also to summon the assistance of
the chamberlains from the inner tent, to restrain him.
“Thou art a false traitor, De Vaux,” said the incensed monarch, when,
breathless and exhausted with struggling, he was compelled to submit
to superior strength, and to repose in quiet on his couch. “I would I
were--I would I were but strong enough to dash thy brains out with my
battle-axe!”
“I would you had the strength, my liege,” said De Vaux, “and would
even take the risk of its being so employed. The odds would be great in
favour of Christendom were Thomas Multon dead and Coeur de Lion himself
again.”
“Mine honest faithful servant,” said Richard, extending his hand, which
the baron reverentially saluted, “forgive thy master's impatience of
mood. It is this burning fever which chides thee, and not thy kind
master, Richard of England. But go, I prithee, and bring me word what
strangers are in the camp, for these sounds are not of Christendom.”
De Vaux left the pavilion on the errand assigned, and in his absence,
which he had resolved should be brief, he charged the chamberlains,
pages, and attendants to redouble their attention on their sovereign,
with threats of holding them to responsibility, which rather added to
than diminished their timid anxiety in the discharge of their duty; for
next, perhaps, to the ire of the monarch himself, they dreaded that
of the stern and inexorable Lord of Gilsland. [Sir Thomas Multon of
Gilsland.]