HOW KING RICHARD REAPED WHAT JEHANE HAD SOWED, AND THE SOLDAN WAS
GLEANER
'Consider with anxious care the marrow of your master when he is
fortunate,' writes Milo of Poictiers: 'if it lasts him, he is a slow
spender of his force; but on that account all the more dangerous in
adversity, having the deeper funds. By this I would be understood to
imply that the devil of Anjou, turned to fighting uses in King Richard's
latter years, found him a habitable fortalice.' With the best reasons in
life for the reflection, he might have said it more simply; for it is
simply true. Deserted by his allies, balked of his great aspiration,
within a day's march of the temple of God, yet as far from that as from
his castle of Chinon; eaten with fever; having death, lost purpose,
murmurings, fed envy reproach, upon his conscience--he yet fought his
way through sullen leagues of mud to Ascalon; besieged it, drove his
enemy out, regained it. Thence, pushing quickly south, he surprised
Darum, and put the garrison to the sword. By this act he cut Saladin in
two, and drove such a wedge into the body of his empire as might leave
either lung of it at his mercy. The time seemed, indeed, ripe for
negotiation. Saladin sent his brother down from Jerusalem with presents
of hawks; Richard, sitting in armed state at Darum, received him
affably. There was still a chance that treaty might win for Jesus Christ
what the sword had not won.
Then, as if in mockery of the greatness of men, came ill news apace. The
Frenchmen, back in Acre, heard tell of Montferrat's doings and undoing.
Pretty work of this sort perturbed the allies. The Duke of Burgundy
charged Saladin with the murder; Saint-Pol loudly charged King Richard,
and the Duke's death, coming timely, left him in the field. He made the
most of his chance, wrote to the Emperor, to King Philip, to his cousin
the Archduke of Austria (at home by now), of this last shameful deed of
the red Angevin. He even sent messengers to Richard himself with open
letters of accusal. Richard laughed, but for all that broke off
negotiations with Saladin until he could prove Saint-Pol as great a liar
as he himself knew him to be. Then rose up again the question of the
Crown of Jerusalem. The Count of Champagne took ship and came to Darum
to beg it of Richard. He too brought news with him. The Duke of Burgundy
was dead of an apoplexy. 'It seems that God is still faintly on my
side,' said Richard, 'There went out a sooty candle.'
The next words gave his boast the lie. 'Beau sire,' said Count Henry, 'I
grieve to tell you something more. Before I left Acre I saw the Abbot
Milo.'
Richard had grey streaks in his face. 'Ah,' he says hoarsely, 'go on,
cousin.' The young man stammered.
'Beau sire, God strikes in divers places, but always finds out the
joints of our harness.'
'Go on,' says King Richard, sitting very still.
'Dear sire, my cousin, the Abbot Milo went out of Acre three weeks
before the death of the Marquess. With him also went Madame Jehane; but
he returned without her. This is all I know, though it is not all that
the abbot knows.'
At the mention of her name the King took a sharp breath, as you or I do
when quick pain strikes us. To the rest he listened without a sign; and
asked at the end, 'Where is Milo?'
'He is at Acre, sire,' says the Count; 'and in prison.'
'Who put him there?'
'Myself, sire.'
'You did wrong, Count. Get you back to Acre and bring him to me.'
Champagne went away.
* * * * *
Great trouble, as you know, always made Richard dumb; the grief struck
inwards and congealed. He became more than ever his own councillor, the
worst in the world. Lucky for the Abbot Milo that he was in bonds; but
now you see why he penned the aphorism with which I began this chapter.
After that short, stabbing flash across his face, he shut down misery in
a vice. The rest of his talk with the Count might have been held with a
groom. Henry of Champagne, knowing the man, left him the moment he got
the word; and King Richard sat down by the table, and for three hours
never stirred. He was literally motionless. Straightly rigid, a little
grey about the face, white at the cheek-bones; his clenched hand stiff
on the board, white also at the knuckles; his eyes fixed on the
door--men came in, knelt and said their say, then encountering his blank
eyes bent their heads and backed out quietly. If he thought, none may
learn his thought; if he felt, none may touch the place; if he prayed,
let those who are able imagine his prayers. What Jehane had been to him
this book may have shadowed out: this only I say, that he knew, from the
very first hint of the fact, why she had gone out with Milo and sent
Milo home alone. The Queen knew, because Jehane had told her; but he
knew with no telling at all. She had gone away to save him from herself.
Needing him not, because she so loved him, it was her beauty which was
hungry for his desire. Not daring to mar her beauty, she had sought to
hide it. Greater love hath none than this. If he thought of that it
should have softened him. He did not think of it: he knew it.
At the end of his grim vigil he got up and went out of his house. He was
served with his horse, his esquires came at call to the routine of
garrison days and nights. He rode round the walls, out at one of the
gates, on a sharp canter of reconnaissance in the hills. Perhaps he
spoke more shortly than usual, and more drily; there may have been a
dead quality in his voice, usually so salient. There was no other sign.
At supper he sat before them all, ate and drank at his wont. Once only
he startled the hallful of them. He dropped his great gold cup, and it
split.
But as day followed night, all men saw the change in him, Christians and
Saracens alike. A spirit of quiet savagery seemed to possess him; the
cunning, with the mad interludes, of a devil. He set patient traps for
the Saracens in the hills, and slaughtered all he took. One day he fell
upon a great caravan of camels coming from Babylon to Jerusalem, and
having cut the escort to pieces, slew also the merchants and travellers.
He seemed to give the sword the more heartily in that he sought it for
himself, but could never get it. No doubt he deserved to get it. He
performed deeds of impossible foolhardy gallantry, the deeds of a
knight-errant; rode solitary, made single-handed rescues, suffered
himself to be cut off from his posts, and then with a handful of
knights, or alone, indeed, carved his way back to Darum. Des Barres, the
Earl of Leicester and the Grand Master, never left his side; Gaston of
Béarn used to sleep at the foot of his bed and creep about after him
like a cat; but this terrible mood of his wore them out. Then, at last,
the Count of Champagne came back with Milo and more bad news. Joppa was
in sore straits, again besieged; the Bishop of Sarum was returned from
the West, having a branch of dead broom in his hand and stories of a
throttled kingdom on his lips.
Before any other Richard had Milo alone. The good abbot is very reticent
about the interview in his book. What he omits is more significant than
what he says. 'I found my master,' he writes, 'sitting up in his bed in
his _hauberk of mail_. They told me he had eaten nothing for two days,
yet vomited continually. He had killed five hundred Saracens meantime. I
suppose he knew who I was. "Tell me, my good man," he said (strange
address!), "the name of the person to whom Madame d'Anjou took you."
'I said, "Sire, we went to the Lord of the Assassins, whom they call Old
Man of Musse."
'"Why did you go, monk?" he asked, and felt about for his sword, but
could not find it. Yet it was close by. I said, "Sire, because of a
report which had reached the ears of Madame that the Marquess and the
Old Man were in league to have you murdered." To this he made no reply,
except to call me a fool. Later he asked, "How died the Marquess?"
'"Sire," I answered, "most miserably. He went up Lebanon to see the Old
Man, and came presently down again with two of the Assassins in his
company, but none of his train. These persons, being near his city of
Sidon, at a signal agreed upon stabbed him with their long knives, then
cut off his right hand and despatched it to the Old Man by one of them.
The other stayed by the corpse, and was so found peacefully sleeping,
and burned."
'The King said nothing, but gave me money and a little jewel he used to
wear, as if I had done him a service. Then he nodded a dismissal, and I,
wondering, left him. He did not speak to me again for many weeks.'
* * * * *
You may collect that Richard was very ill. He was. The disease of his
mind fed fat upon the disease of his body, and from the spoils of the
feast savagery reared its clotted head. Syrian mothers still quell
their children with the name of Melek Richard, a reminiscence of the
dreadful time when he was without ruth or rest. He spoke of his purposes
to none, listened to none. The Bishop of Sarum had come in with a budget
of disastrous news: Count John had England under his heel, Philip of
France had entered Normandy in force, the lords of Aquitaine were in
revolt. If God had no use for him in the East, here was work to do in
the West. But had He none? What of Joppa, shuddering under the sword?
What of Acre, where the French army wallowed in sloth, with two queens
at its mercy and Saint-Pol in the mercy-seat? What, indeed, of Jehane?
Nobody breathed her name; yet night and day the image of her floated,
half-hid in scarlet clouds, before King Richard. These clouds, a torn
regiment, raced across his vision, like cavalry broken, in mad retreat.
Out of the tumbled mass two hands would throw up, white, long, thin
hands, Jehane's hands drowned in frothy blood. Then, in his waking
dream, when he drove in the spurs and started to save, the colours
changed, black swam over the blood; and one hand only would stay, held
up warningly, saying, 'Forbear, I am separate, fenced, set apart.' Thus
it was always: menace, wicked endeavour, shipwreck, ruin; always so, her
agony and denial, his wrath and defeat.
But this was wholesome torment. There was other not so
purgatorial--damned torment. That was when the sudden thought of her
possession by another man, of his own robbery, his own impotence to
regain, came upon him in a surging flood and made his neck swell with
the rage of a beast. And no crouching to spring, no flash through the
air, no snatching here. Here was no Gilles de Gurdun to deal with. Only
the beast's resource was his, who had the beast's desire without his
power. At such times of obsession he lashed up and down his chamber or
the flat roof of his house, all the tragic quest of a leopard in a cage
making blank his desperate hunting eyes. 'Lord, Lord, Lord, how long can
this endure?' Alas, the cage was wider than any room, and stronger by
virtue of his own fashioning of the locks. But to do him justice,
Jehane's grave face would sail like a moon among the storm-clouds sooner
or later, and humble him to the dust.
Sometimes, mostly at dawn, when a cool wind stole through the trees, he
saw the trail of events more clearly, and knew whom to blame and whom to
praise. Generous as he was through and through, at these times he did
not spare the whip. But the image he set up before whom to scourge
himself was Jehane Saint-Pol, that pure cold saint, offering up her
proud body for his needs; and so sure as he did that he desired her, and
so sure as he desired he raged that he had been robbed. Robber as he
owned himself, now he had been robbed. So the old black strife began
again. Many and many a dawn, as he thought of these things, he went out
alone into the shadowless places of the land, to the quiet lapping sea,
to the gardens, or to the housetop fronting the new-born day, with
prayer throbbing for utterance, but a tongue too dry to pray. Despair
seized on him, and he led his men out to death-dealing, that so haply
he might find death for himself. The time wore to early summer, while he
was nightly visited by the thought of his sin, and daily winning more
stuff for repentance. Then, one morning, instead of going out singly to
battle with his own soul, he went in to the Abbot Milo. What follows
shall be told in his own words.
'The King came to me very early in the morning of Saints Primus and
Felician, while I yet lay in my bed. "Milo, Milo," said he, "what must I
do to be saved?" He was very white and wild, shaking all over. I said,
"Dear Master, save thy people. On all sides they cry to thee--from
England, from Normandy, from Anjou, from Joppa also, and Acre. There is
no lack of entreaty." He shook his head. "Here," he said, "I can do no
more. God is against me, the work too holy for such a wretch." "Lord," I
said, "we are all wretches, Heaven save us! If your Grace is held off
God's inheritance, you can at least hold others from your own. Here, may
be, you took a charge too heavy; but there, at home, the charge was laid
upon you. Renouncing here, you shall gain there. It cannot be
otherwise." I believed in what I said; but he gripped the caps of his
knees and rocked himself about. "They have beaten me, Milo. Saint-Pol,
Burgundy, Beauvais--I am bayed by curs. What am I, Milo?" "Sire," I
said, "your father's son. As they bayed the old lion, so they bay the
young." He gaped at me, open-mouthed. "By God. Milo," he said, "I bayed
him myself, and believed that he deserved it." "Lord," I answered, "who
am I to judge a great king? For my part I never believed that monstrous
sin was upon him." Here he jumped up. "I am going home, Milo," he said;
"I am going home. I am going to my father's tomb. I will do penance
there, and serve my people, and live clean. Look now, Milo, shrive me if
thou hast the power, for my need is great." The thought was blessed to
him. He confessed his sins then and there, all a huddle of them, weeping
so bitterly that I should have wept myself had I not been ready rather
to laugh and crack my fingers to see the breaking up of his long and
deadly frost. Before I shrived him, moreover, I dared to speak of Madame
Jehane, how he had now lost her for ever, and why; how she was now at
last a man's wife, and that by her own deliberate will; and how also he
must do his duty by the Queen. To all of which he gave heed and promises
of quiet endurance. Then I shrived him, and that very morning gave him
the Lord's sacred body in the Church of the Sepulchre. I believed him
sane; and so for a long time he was, as he testified by deeds of
incredible valour.'
It was not long after this that the fleet put out to sea, shaping course
for Acre. Message after message came in from beleaguered Joppa; but King
Richard paid little heed to them, pending the issue of new treating with
Saladin. He certainly sailed with a single eye on Acre. But Joppa lay on
his course, and it is probable, he being what he was, that the sight of
no means to do great deeds made great deeds done. When his red galley
sighted Joppa, standing in for the purpose, all seemed over with the
doomed city. This, no doubt (since his mood was hot), urged him to one
of those impossible acts, 'incredible deeds of valour,' as Milo calls
them, for which his name lives, while those of many better kings are
forgotten.
The country about Joppa slopes sharply to the sea, and gives little or
no shelter for ships; but so quick is the slope that a galley may ride
under the very walls of the town and take in provision from the seaward
windows. On the landward side it is dangerously placed, seeing that the
stoop of the country runs from the mountains to it. The few outlying
forts, the stone bridge over the river, cannot be held against a
resolute foe. When King Richard's fleet drew near enough to see, it was
plain what had been done. The Saracens had carried the outworks; they
held the bridge. At leisure they had broached the walls and swarmed in.
The flag on the citadel still flew; battle or carnage was raging in the
streets all about it. Its fall was a matter of hours.
Now King Richard stood on the poop of his galley, watching all this. He
saw a man come running down the mole chased by half a dozen horsemen in
yellow, a priest by the look of him; you could see the gleam of his
tonsure as he plunged. For so he did, plunged into the sea and swam for
his life. The pursuers drew up on the verge and shot at him with their
long bows. They were of Saladin's bodyguard, fine marksmen who should
never have missed him. But the priest swam like a fish, and they did
miss him. King Richard himself hooked him out by the gown, and then
clipped him in his arms like a lover. 'Oh, brave priest! Oh, hardy
heart!' he cried, full of the man's bravery. 'Give him room there. Let
him cough up the salt. By my soul, barons, I wish that any draught of
wine may be so glorious sweet.'
The priest sat up and told his tale. The city was a shambles; every man,
woman, or child had been put to the sword. Only the citadel held out;
there was no time to lose. No time was lost; for King Richard, in his
tunic and breeches as he was, in his deck shoes, without a helm,
unmailed in any part, snatched up shield and axe. 'Who follows Anjou?'
he called out, then plunged into the sea. Des Barres immediately
followed him, then Gaston of Béarn (with a yell) and the Earl of
Leicester neck and neck; then the Bishop of Salisbury, a stout-hearted
prince, Auvergne, Limoges, and Mercadet. These eight were all the men in
authority that _Trenchemer_ held, except some clerks, fat men who loved
not water. But as soon as the other ships saw what was afoot, a man here
and there followed his King. The rest rowed closer to the shore and
engaged the Saracen horsemen with their archers. Long before any men
could be got off the eight were on dry land, and had found a way into
the sacked city.
How they did what they did the God of Battles knows best; but that they
did it is certain. All accounts of the fray agree, Bohadin with Vinsauf,
Moslem and Christian alike. What pent rage, what storm curbed up short,
what gall, what mortification, what smoulder of resentment, bit into
King Richard, we may guess who know him. Such it was as to nerve his
arm, nerve his following to be his lovers, make him unassailable, make a
devil of him. Not a devil of blind fury, but a cold devil who could
devise a scope for his malice, choose how to do his stabbing work
wiseliest. Inside the town gate they took up close order, wedgewise,
linked and riveted; a shield before, shields beside, Richard with his
double-axe for the wedge's beak. They took the steep street at a brisk
pace, turning neither right nor left, but heading always for the
citadel, boring through and trampling down what met them. This at first
was not very much, only at one corner a company of Nubian spears came
pelting down a lane, hoping to cut them off by a flank movement. Richard
stopped his wedge; the blacks buffeted into their shields with a shock
that scattered and tossed them up like spray. The wedge held firm; red
work for axe and swords while it lasted. They killed most of the
Nubians, drove bodily through the rabble at their heels; then into the
square of the citadel they came. It was packed with a shrieking horde,
whose drums made the day a hell, whose great banners wagged and rocked
like osiers in a flood-water. They were trying to fire the citadel, and
some were swarming the walls from others' backs. The square was like a
whirlpool in the sea, a sea of tense faces whose waves were surging men
and the flying wrack their gonfanons.
King Richard saw how matters lay in this horrible hive; these men could
not fight so close. Cavalry can do nothing in a dense mass of foot,
bowmen cannot shoot confined; spearmen against swords are little worth,
javelins sped once. So much he saw, and also the straining crowd, the
lifted, threatening arms, the stretched necks about the citadel. 'O
Lord, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance. At the word, sirs,
cleave a way.' And then he cried above the infernal riot, 'Save, Holy
Sepulchre! Save, Saint George!' and the wedge drove into the thick of
them.
This work was butcher's work, like sawing through live flesh. Too much
blood in the business: after a while the haft of the King's axe got
rotten with it, and at a certain last blow gave way and bent like a
pulpy stock. He helped himself to a beheaded Mameluke's scimitar, and
did his affair with that. Once, twice, thrice, and four times they
furrowed that swarm of men; nothing broke their line. Richard himself
was only cut in the feet, where he trod on mailed bodies or broken
swords; the others (being themselves in mail) were without scathe. They
held the square until the Count of Champagne came up with knights and
Pisan arbalestiers, and then the day was won. They drove out the
invaders; on the Templars' house they ran up the English dragon-flag.
King Richard rested himself.
Two days later a pitched battle was fought on the slopes above Joppa.
Saladin met Richard for the last time, and the Melek worsted him. Our
King with fifteen knights played the wedge again when his enemy was
packed to his taste; and this time (being known) with less carnage. But
the left wing of the invading army re-entered the town, the garrison had
a panic. Richard wheeled and scoured them out at the other end; so they
perished in the sea. Men say, who saw him, that he did it alone. So
terrible a name he had with the Saracens, this may very well be. There
had never been seen, said they, such a fighter before. Like sheep they
huddled at his sight, and like sheep his onset scattered them. 'Let God
arise,' says Milo with a shaking pen: 'and lo! He arose. O lion in the
path, who shall stand up against thee?'
He drove Saladin into the hills, and set him manning once more the
watch-towers of Jerusalem. But he had reached his limit; sickness
fastened on him, and on the ebb of his fury came lagging old despair.
For a week he lay in his bed delirious, babbling breathless foolish
things of Jehane and the Dark Tower, of the broomy downs by Poictiers,
the hills of Languedoc, of Henry his handsome brother, of Bertran de
Born and the falcon at Le Puy. Then followed a pleasant thing. Saladin,
the noble foe, heard of it, and sent Saphadin his brother to visit him.
They brought the great Emir into the tent of his great enemy.
'O God of the Christians!' cried he with tears, 'what is this work of
thine, to make such a mirror of thy might, and then to shatter the
glass?' He kissed King Richard's burning forehead, then stood facing the
standers-by.
'I tell you, my lords, there has been no such king as this in our
country. My brother the Sultan would rather lose Jerusalem than have
such a man to die.'
At this Richard opened his eyes. 'Eh, Saphadin, my friend,' he says,
'death is not mine yet, nor Jerusalem either. Make me a truce with my
brother Saladin for three years. Then with the grace of God I will come
and fight him again. But for this time I am spent.'
'Are you wounded, dear sire?' asked Saphadin.
'Wounded?' said the King in a whisper. 'Yes, wounded in the soul, and in
the heart--sick, sick, sick.'
Saphadin, kneeling down, kissed his ring. 'May the God whom in secret we
both worship, the God of Gods, do well by you, my brother.' So he said,
and Richard nodded and smiled at him kindly.
When peace was made they carried him to his ship. The fleet went to
Acre.