THE CHAPTER CALLED BONDS
King Richard sent for his sister Joan of Sicily on the morrow of his
coming to Acre, and thus addressed her: 'Let me hear now, sister, the
truth of what passed when the Queen saw Madame d'Anjou.'
'Madame d'Anjou!' cried Joan, who (as you know) had plenty of spirit; 'I
think you rob the Queen of a title there.'
'I cannot rob her of what she never had,' said King Richard; 'but I will
repeat my question if you do not remember it.'
'No need, sire,' replied the lady, and told him all she knew. She added,
'Sire and my brother, if I may dare to say so, I think the Queen has a
grief. Madame Jehane made no pretensions--I hope I do her full
justice--but remember that the Queen made none either. You took her of
your royal will; she was conscious of the honour. But of what you gave
you took away more than half. The Queen loves you, Richard; she is a
most miserable lady, yet there is time still. Make a wife of your queen,
brother Richard, and all will be well. For what other reason in the
world did Madame Jehane what she did? For love of an old man whom she
had never seen, do you think?'
The King's brow grew dark red. He spoke deliberately. 'I will never make
her my wife. I will never willingly see her again. I should sin against
religion or honour if I did either. I will never do that. Let her go to
her own country.'
'Sire, sire,' said Joan, 'how is she to do that?'
'As she will,' says the King; 'but, for my part of it, with every proper
accompaniment.'
'Sire, the dowry--'
'I return it, every groat.'
'The affront--'
'The affront is offered. I prevent a greater affront.'
'Is this fixed, Richard?'
'Irrevocably.'
'She loves you, sire!'
'She loves ill. Get up on your feet.'
'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 Berengère 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 Marseilles. 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 shore 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 Marseilles, 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 Béziers; 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 shore. 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 God, 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 Danaë 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 vassal.
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 assumed 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.
The end of the day's work was that the King of England was lodged in a
high tower, some sixty feet above the town wall.
* * * * *
Now consider the acts of Martin Vaux, smelling for the sea. In a little
time he did better than that, for he saw it from the top of a high
mountain, shining far off in the haze, and then had nothing to do but
follow down a river-bed, which brought him duly to Trieste. Thence he
got a passage to Venice, where the wineshops were too good or too many
for him. He talked of his misfortunes, of his broken shoes, of Austrian
beer, of his exalted master, of his extreme ingenuity and capacity for
all kinds of faithful service. Now Venice was, as it is now, a place
_colluvies gentium_. Gaunt, lonely Arabs stalked the narrow streets, or
dreamed motionless by the walls of the quay. The city was full of
strayed Crusaders, disastrous broken blades, of renegade Christians,
renegade Moslems, adaptable Jews, of pilgrims, and chafferers of relics
from the holy places. Martin's story spread like the plague, but not
(unhappily) to any advantage of King Richard imperturbable in his tower.
Martin Vaux then, having drunk up the charity of Venice, shipped for
Ancona. There too he met with attentions, for there he met a countryman
of his, the Sieur Gilles de Gurdun, a Norman knight.
When Sir Gilles heard that King Richard was in prison, but that Jehane
was not with him, he grew very red. That he had never learned of her
deeds at Acre need not surprise you. He had not heard because he had not
been to Acre with the French host, but instead had gone pilgrim to
Jerusalem, and thence with Lusignan to Cyprus. So now he took Martin
Vaux by the windpipe and shook him till his eyes stared like agate
balls. 'Tell me where Madame Jehane is, you clot, or I finish what I
have begun,' he said terribly. But Martin could tell him no more, for he
was quite dead. It was proper, even in Ancona, to be moving after that;
and Gilles was very ready to move. The hunger and thirst for Jehane,
which had never left him for long, came aching back to such a pitch that
he felt he must now find her, see her, touch her, or die. The King was
her only clue; he must hunt him out wherever he might be. One of two
things had occurred: either Richard had tired of her, or he had lost her
by mischance of travel. There was a third possible thing, that the Queen
had had her murdered. He put that from him, being sure she was not dead.
'Death,' said Gilles, 'is great, but not great enough to have Jehane in
her beauty.' He really believed this. So he came back to his two
positions. If the King had tired of her, he would not scruple (being as
he was) to admit as much to Gilles. If he had lost her, he was safe in
prison; and Gilles knew that with time he could find her. But he must
be sure. He thought of another thing. 'If he is in prison, in chains, he
might be stabbed with certain ease.' His heart exulted at the hot
thought.
It was not hard to follow back on Martin's dallying footsteps. He traced
him to Venice, to Trieste, up the mountains as far as Blomau. There he
lost him, and shot very wide of the mark. In fact, the slow-witted young
man went to Vienna on a false rumour--but it boots not recount his
wanderings. Six months after he left Ancona, ragged, hatless, unkempt,
hungry, he came within sight of the strong towers of Gratz; and as he
went limping by the town ditch he heard a clear, high voice singing--
Li dous consire
Quem don' Ainors soven--
and knew that he had run down his man.
One other, crouching under the wall, most intent watcher, saw him stop
as if hit, clap his hand to his shock-head, then listen, brooding,
working his jaws from side to side. The voice stayed; Gilles turned and
slowly went his way back. He limped under the gateway into the town, and
the croucher by the wall peered at him between the meshes of her
dishevelled hair.