On the morning of Shrove Tuesday, in the year of our Lord 1249, Sir
Aimery of Beaumanoir, the envoy of the most Christian king, Louis of
France, arrived in the port of Acre, having made the voyage from Cyprus
with a fair wind in a day and a night in a ship of Genoa flying the red
and gold banner of the Temple. Weary of the palms and sun-baked streets
of Limasol and the eternal wrangling of the Crusading hosts, he looked
with favour at the noble Palestine harbour, and the gilt steeples and
carven houses of the fair city. From the quay he rode to the palace of
the Templars and was admitted straightway to an audience with the Grand
Master. For he had come in a business of some moment.
The taste of Cyprus was still in his mouth; the sweet sticky air of the
coastlands; the smell of endless camps of packed humanity, set among
mountains of barrels and malodorous sprouting forage-stuffs; the narrow
streets lit at night by flares of tarry staves; and over all that
rotting yet acrid flavour which is the token of the East. The young
damoiseau of Beaumanoir had grown very sick of it all since the royal
dromonds first swung into Limasol Bay. He had seen his friends die like
flies of strange maladies, while the host waited on Hugh of Burgundy.
Egypt was but four days off across the waters, and on its sands Louis
had ordained that the War of the Cross should begin.
... But the King seemed strangely supine. Each day the enemy was the
better forewarned, and each day the quarrels of Templar and Hospitaller
grew more envenomed, and yet he sat patiently twiddling his thumbs, as
if all time lay before him and not a man's brief life. And now when at
long last the laggards of Burgundy and the Morea were reported on their
way, Sir Aimery had to turn his thoughts from the honest field of war.
Not for him to cry Montjole St. Denis by the Nile. For behold he was now
speeding on a crazy errand to the ends of the earth.
There had been strange councils in the bare little chamber of the Most
Christian King. Those locusts of the dawn whom men called Tartars, the
evil seed of the Three Kings who had once travelled to Bethlehem, had,
it seemed, been vouchsafed a glimpse of grace. True, they had plundered
and eaten the faithful and shed innocent blood in oceans, but they hated
the children of Mahound worse than the children of Christ. On the eve
of Christmas-tide four envoys had come from their Khakan, monstrous men
with big heads that sprang straight from the shoulder, and arms that
hung below the knee, and short thin legs like gnomes. For forty weeks
they had been on the road, and they brought gifts such as no eye had
seen before--silks like gossamer woven with wild alphabets, sheeny jars
of jade, and pearls like moons. Their Khakan, they said, had espoused
the grandchild of Prester John, and had been baptized into the Faith. He
marched against Bagdad, and had sworn to root the heresy of Mahound from
the earth. Let the King of France make a league with him, and between
them, pressing from east and west, they would accomplish the holy task.
Let him send teachers to expound the mysteries of God, and let him
send knights who would treat on mundane things. The letter, written
in halting Latin and sealed with a device like a spider's web, urged
instant warfare with Egypt. “For the present we dwell far apart,” wrote
the Khakan; “therefore let us both get to business.”
So Aimery had been summoned to the King's chamber, where he found his
good master, the Count of St. Pol, in attendance with others. After
prayer, Louis opened to them his mind. Pale from much fasting and
nightly communing with God, his face was lit again with that light which
had shone in it when on the Friday after Pentecost the year before
he had received at St. Denis the pilgrim's scarf and the oriflamme of
France.
“God's hand is in this, my masters,” he said. “Is it not written that
many shall come from the east and from the west to sit down with Abraham
in his kingdom? I have a duty towards those poor folk, and I dare not
fail.”
There was no man present bold enough to argue with the white fire in the
King's eyes. One alone cavilled. He was a Scot, Sir Patrick, the Count
of Dunbar, who already shook with the fever which was to be his death.
“This Khakan is far away, sire,” he said. “If it took his envoys forty
weeks to reach us, it will be a good year before his armies are on the
skirts of Egypt. As well make alliance with a star.”
But Louis was in missionary mood. “God's ways are not as our ways. To
Him a thousand years are a day, and He can make the weakest confound a
multitude. This far-away King asks for instruction, and I will send him
holy men to fortify his young faith. And this knight, of whom you, my
lord of St. Pol, speak well, shall bear the greetings of a soldier.”
Louis' face, which for usual was grave like a wise child's, broke into
a smile which melted Aimery's heart. He scarcely heard the Count of
St. Pol as that stout friend enlarged on his merits. “The knight of
Beaumanoir,” so ran the testimony, “has more learning than any clerk. In
Spain he learned the tongues of the heathen, and in Paris he read deep
in their philosophy. Withal he is a devout son of Holy Church.”
The boy blushed at the praise and the King's kindly regard. But St. Pol
spoke truth, for Aimery, young as he was, had travelled far both on the
material globe and in the kingdom of the spirit. As a stripling he had
made one of the Picardy Nation in the schools of Paris. He had studied
the metaphysics of Aristotle under Aquinas, and voyaged strange seas of
thought piloted by Roger, the white-bearded Englishman. Thence, by the
favour of the Queen-mother, he had gone as squire to Alphonso's court of
Castile, where the Spanish doctors had opened windows for him into the
clear dry wisdom of the Saracens. He had travelled with an embassy
to the Emperor, and in Sicily had talked with the learned Arabs
who clustered around the fantastic Frederick. In Italy he had met
adventurers of Genoa and Venice who had shown him charts of unknown
oceans and maps of Prester John's country and the desert roads that
led to Cambaluc, that city farther than the moon, and told him tales of
awful and delectable things hidden beyond the dawn. He had returned to
his tower by the springs of Canche, a young man with a name for uncanny
knowledge, a searcher after concealed matters, negligent of religion and
ill at ease in his world.
Then Louis cast his spell over him. He saw the King first at a great
hunting in Avesnes and worshipped from afar the slight body, royal in
every line of it, and the blue eyes which charmed and compelled, for he
divined there a spirit which had the secret of both earth and heaven.
While still under the glamour he was given knighthood at the royal
hands, and presently was weaned from unwholesome fancies by falling in
love. The girl, Alix of Valery, was slim like a poplar and her eyes were
grey and deep as her northern waters. She had been a maid of Blanche
the Queen, and had a nun's devoutness joined to a merry soul. Under her
guiding Aimery made his peace with the Church, and became notable for
his gifts to God, for he derived great wealth from his Flemish forbears.
Yet the yeast of youth still wrought in him, and by Alix's side at night
he dreamed of other lands than his grey-green Picardy. So, when the King
took the croix d'outre mer and summoned his knights to the freeing of
Jerusalem, Sir Aimery of Beaumanoir was the first to follow. For to him,
as to others like him, the goal was no perishable city made by mortal
hands, but that beata urbs without foundations which youth builds of its
dreams.
He heard mass by the King's side and, trembling with pride, kissed the
royal hands and set out on his journey. His last memory of Louis was of
a boyish figure in a surcoat of blue samite, gazing tenderly on him as
of bidding farewell to a brother.
The Grand Master of the Templars, sitting in a furred robe in a warm
upper chamber, for he had an ague on him, spoke gloomily of the mission.
He would have preferred to make alliance with the Soldan of Egypt, and
by his aid recover the Holy Cities. “What Khakan is this?” he cried, “to
whom it is a journey of a lifetime to come nigh? What kind of Christian
will you make of men that have blood for drink and the flesh of babes
for food, and blow hither and thither on horses like sandstorms? Yours
is a mad venture, young sir, and I see no good that can come of it.”
Nevertheless he wrote letters of commendation to the Prince of Antioch
and the Constable of Armenia; and he brought together all those about
the place who had travelled far inland to make a chart of the journey.
Aimery heeded little the Templar's forebodings, for his heart had grown
high again and romance was kindling his fancy. There was a knuckle of
caution in him, for he had the blood of Flemish traders in his veins,
though enriched by many nobler streams. “The profit is certain,” a cynic
had whispered to him ere they left Aigues Mortes. “Should we conquer we
shall grow rich, and if we fail we shall go to heaven.” The phrase had
fitted some of his moods, notably the black ones at Limasol, but now he
was all aflame with the quixotry of the Crusader. He neither needed
nor sought wealth, nor was he concerned about death. His feet trod the
sacred soil of his faith, and up in the hills which rimmed the
seaward plain lay all the holiness of Galilee and Nazareth, the three
tabernacles built by St. Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, the
stone whence Christ ascended into heaven, the hut at Bethlehem which
had been the Most High's cradle, the sanctuary of Jerusalem whose every
stone was precious. Presently his King would win it all back for God.
But for him was the sterner task--no clean blows in the mellay among
brethren, but a lone pilgrimage beyond the east wind to the cradle
of all marvels. The King had told him that he carried the hopes of
Christendom in his wallet; he knew that he bore within himself the
delirious expectation of a boy. Youth swelled his breast and steeled his
sinews and made a golden mist for his eyes. The new, the outlandish,
the undreamed-of!--Surely no one of the Seven Champions had had such
fortune! Scribes long after would write of the deeds of Aimery of
Beaumanoir, and minstrels would sing of him as they sang of Roland and
Tristan.
The Count of Jaffa, whose tower stood on the borders and who was
therefore rarely quit of strife, convoyed him a stage or two on his way.
It was a slender company: two Franciscans bearing the present of Louis
to the Khakan--a chapel-tent of scarlet cloth embroidered inside with
pictures of the Annunciation and the Passion; two sumpter mules with
baggage; Aimery's squire, a lad from the Boulonnais; and Aimery himself
mounted on a Barbary horse warranted to go far on little fodder. The
lord of Jaffa turned back when the snows of Lebanon were falling behind
on their right. He had nodded towards the mountains.
“There lives the Old Man and his Ishmaelites. Fear nothing, for his
fangs are drawn.” And when Aimery asked the cause of the impotence of
the renowned Assassins, he was told--“That Khakan whom ye seek.”
After that they made good speed to the city of Antioch, where not so
long before angels from heaven had appeared as knights in white armour
to do battle for the forlorn Crusaders. There they were welcomed by
the Prince and sent forward into Armenia, guided by the posts of the
Constable of that harassed kingdom. Everywhere the fame of the Tartars
had gone abroad, and with each mile they journeyed the tales became
stranger. Conquerers and warriors beyond doubt, but grotesque paladins
for the Cross. Men whispered their name with averted faces, and in the
eyes of the travelled ones there was the terror of sights remembered
outside the mortal pale. Aimery's heart was stout, but he brooded much
as the road climbed into the mountains. Far off in Cyprus the Khakan had
seemed a humble devotee at Christ's footstool, asking only to serve and
learn; but now he had grown to some monstrous Cyclops beyond the stature
of man, a portent like a thundercloud brooding over unnumbered miles.
Besides, the young lord was homesick, and had long thoughts of Alix his
wife and the son she had borne him. As he looked at the stony hills he
remembered that it would now be springtide in Picardy, when the young
green of the willows fringed every watercourse and the plovers were
calling on the windy downs.
The Constable of Armenia dwelt in a castle of hewn stone about which a
little city clustered, with mountains on every side to darken the sky,
He was as swarthy as a Saracen and had a long nose like a Jew, but he
was a good Christian and a wise ruler, though commonly at odds with his
cousin of Antioch. From him Aimery had more precise news of the Khakan.
There were two, said the Constable. “One who rules all Western Asia east
of the Sultan's principates. Him they call the Ilkhan for title, and
Houlagou for name. His armies have eaten up the Chorasmians and the
Muscovites and will presently bite their way into Christendom, unless
God change their heart. By the Gospels, they are less and more than men.
Swinish drinkers and gluttons, they rise from their orgies to sweep the
earth like a flame. Here inside our palisade of rock we wait fearfully.”
“And the other?” Aimery asked.
“Ah, he is as much the greater as the sun is greater than a star. Kublai
they name him, and he is in some sort the lord of Houlagou. I have never
met the man who has seen him, for he dwells as far beyond the Ilkhan as
the Ilkhan is far from the Pillars of Hercules. But rumour has it that
he is a clement and beneficent prince, terrible in battle, but a lover
of peace and all good men. They tell wonders about his land of Cathay,
where strips of parchment stamped with the King's name take the place
of gold among the merchants, so strong is that King's honour. But the
journey to Cambaluc, the city of Kublai, would fill a man's lifetime.”
One April morning they heard mass after the odd Syrian fashion, and
turned their faces eastward. The Constable's guides led them through the
mountains, up long sword-cuts of valleys and under frowning snowdrifts,
or across stony barrens where wretched beehive huts huddled by the
shores of unquiet lakes. Presently they came into summer, and found
meadows of young grass and green forests on the hills' skirts, and saw
wide plains die into the blueness of morning. There the guides left
them, and the little cavalcade moved east into unknown anarchies.
The sky grew like brass over their heads, and the land baked and rutted
with the sun's heat. It seemed a country empty of man, though sometimes
they came on derelict ploughlands and towns of crumbling brick charred
and glazed by fire. In sweltering days they struggled through flats
where the grass was often higher than a horse's withers, and forded the
tawny streams which brought down the snows of the hills. Now and then
they would pass wandering herdsmen, who fled to some earth-burrow at
their appearance. The Constable had bidden them make for the rising
sun, saying that sooner or later they would foregather with the Khakan's
scouts. But days passed into weeks and weeks into months, and still they
moved through a tenantless waste. They husbanded jealously the food
they had brought, but the store ran low, and there were days of empty
stomachs and light heads. Unless, like the King of Babylon, they were to
eat grass in the fashion of beasts, it seemed they must soon famish.
But late in summertime they saw before them a wall of mountain, and in
three days climbed by its defiles to a pleasant land, where once more
they found the dwellings of man. It appeared that they were in a country
where the Tartars had been for some time settled and which had for years
been free of the ravages of war. The folks were hunters and shepherds
who took the strangers for immortal beings and offered food on bent
knees like oblations to a god. They knew where the Ilkhan dwelt, and
furnished guides for each day's journey. Aimery, who had been sick of a
low fever in the plains, and had stumbled on in a stupor torn by flashes
of homesickness, found his spirits reviving. He had cursed many times
the futility of his errand. While the Franciscans were busied with their
punctual offices and asked nothing of each fresh day but that it should
be as prayerful as the last, he found a rebellious unbelief rising in
his heart. He was travelling roads no Christian had ever trod, on
a wild-goose errand, while his comrades were winning fame in the
battle-front. Alas! that a bright sword should rust in these barrens!
But with the uplands peace crept into his soul and some of the mystery
of his journey. It was a brave venture, whether it failed or no, for he
had already gone beyond the pale even of men's dreams. The face of
Louis hovered before him. It needed a great king even to conceive such a
mission.... He had been sent on a king's errand too. He stood alone for
France and the Cross in a dark world. Alone, as kings should stand, for
to take all the burden was the mark of kingship. His heart bounded
at the thought, for he was young. His father had told him of that old
Flanders grandam, who had sworn that his blood came from proud kings.
But chiefly he thought of Louis with a fresh warmth of love. Surely the
King loved him, or he would not have chosen him out of many for this
fateful work. He had asked of him the ultimate service, as a friend
should. Aimery reconstructed in his inner vision all his memories of the
King: the close fair hair now thinning about the temples; the small face
still contoured like a boy's; the figure strung like a bow; the quick,
eager gestures; the blue dove's eyes, kindly and humble, as became one
whose proudest title was to be a “sergeant of the Crucified.” But those
same eyes could also steel and blaze, for his father had been called the
Lion, his mother Semiramis, and his grandsire Augustus. In these wilds
Aimery was his vicegerent and bore himself proudly as the proxy of such
a monarch.
The hour came when they met the Tartar outposts. A cloud of horse swept
down on them, each man riding loose with his hand on a taut bowstring.
In silence they surrounded the little party, and their leader made signs
to Aimery to dismount. The Constable had procured for him a letter in
Tartar script, setting out the purpose of his mission. This the outpost
could not read, but they recognised some word among the characters, and
pointed it out to each other with uncouth murmurings. They were strange
folk, with eyes like pebbles and squat frames and short, broad faces,
but each horse and man moved in unison like a centaur.
With gestures of respect the Tartars signalled to the Christians to
follow, and led them for a day and a night southward down a broad
valley, where vines and fruit trees grew and peace dwelt in villages.
They passed encampments of riders like themselves, and little scurries
of horsemen would ride athwart their road and exchange greetings. On the
second morning they reached a city, populous in men but not in houses.
For miles stretched lines of skin tents, and in the heart of them by the
river's edge stood a great hall of brick, still raw from the builders.
Aimery sat erect on his weary horse with the hum of an outlandish host
about him, himself very weary and very sick at heart. For the utter
folly of it all had come on him like the waking from a dream. These men
were no allies of the West. They were children of the Blue Wolf, as
the Constable had said, a monstrous brood, swarming from the unknown
to blight the gardens of the world. A Saracen compared to such was a
courteous knight.... He thought of Kublai, the greater Khakan. Perhaps
in his court might dwell gentlehood and reason. But here was but a wolf
pack in the faraway guise of man.
They gave the strangers food and drink--halfcooked fish and a porridge
of rye and sour spiced milk, and left them to sleep until sundown. Then
the palace guards led them to the presence.
The hall was immense, dim and shapeless like the inside of a hill,
not built according to the proportions of mankind. Flambeaux and wicks
floating in great basins of mutton fat showed a dense concourse of
warriors, and through an aisle of them Aimery approached the throne. In
front stood a tree of silver, springing from a pedestal of four lions
whose mouths poured streams of wine, syrup, and mead into basins, which
were emptied by a host of slaves, the cup-bearers of the assembly.
There were two thrones side by side, on one of which sat a figure so
motionless that it might have been wrought of jasper. Weighted with
a massive head-dress of pearls and a robe of gold brocade, the little
grandchild of Prester John seemed like a doll on which some princess had
lavished wealth and fancy. The black eyelashes lay quiet on her olive
cheeks, and her breathing did not stir her stiff, jewelled bodice.
“I have seen death in life,” thought Aimery as he shivered and looked
aside.
Houlagou, her husband, was a tall man compared with the others. His
face was hairless, and his mouth fine and cruel. His eyes were hard like
agates, with no light in them. A passionless power lurked in the low
broad forehead, and the mighty head sunk deep between the shoulders; but
the power not of a man, but of some abortion of nature, like storm or
earthquake. Again Aimery shivered. Had not the prophets foretold that
one day Antichrist would be reborn in Babylon?
Among the Ilkhan's scribes was a Greek who spoke a bastard French and
acted as interpreter. King Louis' letter was read, and in that hall
its devout phrases seemed a mockery. The royal gifts were produced,
the tent-chapel with its woven pictures and the sacred utensils. The
half-drunk captains fingered them curiously, but the eyes from the
throne scarcely regarded them.
“These are your priests,” said the Khakan “Let them talk with my priests
and then go their own way. I have little concern with priestcraft.”
Then Aimery spoke, and the Greek with many haltings translated. He
reminded Houlagou of the Tartar envoys who had sought from his King
instruction in the Christian faith and had proclaimed his baptism.
“Of that I know nothing,” was the answer. “Maybe 'twas some whim of my
brother Kublai. I have all the gods I need.”
With a heavy heart Aimery touched on the proposed alliance, the advance
on Bagdad, and the pinning of the Saracens between two fires. He spoke
as he had been ordered, but with a bitter sense of futility, for what
kind of ally could be looked for in this proud pagan?
The impassive face showed no flicker of interest.
“I am eating up the Caliphs,” he said, “but that food is for my own
table. As for allies, I have need of none. The children of the Blue Wolf
do not make treaties.”
Then he spoke aside to his captains, and fixed Aimery with his agate
eyes. It was like listening to a voice from a stone.
“The King of France has sent you to ask for peace. Peace, no doubt, is
good, and I will grant it of my favour. A tribute will be fixed in gold
and silver, and while it is duly paid your King's lands will be safe
from my warriors. Should the tribute fail, France will be ours. I have
heard that it is a pleasant place.”
The Ilkhan signed that the audience was over. The fountains of liquor
ceased to play, and the drunken gathering stood up with a howling like
wild beasts to acclaim their King. Aimery went back to his hut, and sat
deep in thought far into the night.
He perceived that the shadows were closing in upon him. He must get the
friars away, and with them a message to his master. For himself there
could be no return, for he could not shame his King who had trusted him.
In the bestial twilight of this barbaric court the memory of Louis shone
like a star. He must attempt to reach Kublai, of whom men spoke well,
though the journey cost him his youth and his life. It might mean years
of wandering, but there was a spark of hope in it. There, in the bleak
hut, he suffered the extreme of mental anguish. A heavy door seemed to
have closed between him and all that he held dear. He fell on his knees
and prayed to the saints to support his loneliness. And then he found
comfort, for had not God's Son suffered even as he, and left the bright
streets of Paradise for loneliness among the lost?
Next morning he faced the world with a clearer eye. It was not difficult
to provide for the Franciscans. They, honest men, understood nothing
save that the Tartar king had not the love of holy things for which
they had hoped. They explained the offices of the Church as well as they
could to ribald and uncomprehending auditors, and continued placidly in
their devotions. As it chanced, a convoy was about to start for Muscovy,
whence by ship they might come to Constantinople. The Tartars made no
objection to their journey, for they had some awe of these pale men and
were glad to be quit of foreign priestcraft. With them Aimery sent a
letter in which he told the King that the immediate errand had been
done, but that no good could be looked for from this western Khakan. “I
go,” he said, “to Kublai the Great, in Cathay, who has a heart more open
to God. If I return not, know, Sire, that I am dead in your most loving
service, joyfully and pridefully as a Christian knight dies for the
Cross, his King, and his lady.” He added some prayers on behalf of the
little household at Beaumanoir and sealed it with his ring. It was the
ring he had got from his father, a thick gold thing in which had been
cut his cognisance of three lions' heads.
This done, he sought an audience with the Ilkhan, and told him of his
purpose. Houlagou did not speak for a little, and into his set face
seemed to creep an ill-boding shadow of a smile. “Who am I,” he said at
length, “to hinder your going to my brother Kublai? I will give you an
escort to my eastern borders.”
Aimery bent his knee and thanked him, but from the courtiers rose a
hubbub of mirth which chilled his gratitude. He was aware that he sailed
on very desperate waters.
Among the Tartars was a recreant Genoese who taught them metal work
and had once lived at the court of Cambaluc. The man had glimmerings of
honesty, and tried hard to dissuade Aimery from the journey. “It is
a matter of years,” he told him, “and the road leads through deserts
greater than all Europe and over mountains so high and icy that birds
are frozen in the crossing. And a word in your ear, my lord. The Ilkhan
permits few to cross his eastern marches. Beware of treason, I say. Your
companions are the blood-thirstiest of the royal guards.”
But from the Genoese he obtained a plan of the first stages of the road,
and one morning in autumn he set out from the Tartar city, his squire
from the Boulonnais by his side, and at his back a wild motley of
horsemen, wearing cuirasses of red leather stamped with the blue wolf of
Houlagou's house.
October fell chill and early in those uplands, and on the fourth day
they came into a sprinkling of snow. At night round the fires the
Tartars made merry, for they had strong drink in many skin bottles, and
Aimery was left to his own cold meditations. If he had had any hope, it
was gone now, for the escort made it clear that he was their prisoner.
Judging from the chart of the Genoese, they were not following any road
to Cambaluc, and the sight of the sky told him that they were circling
round to the south. The few Tartar words he had learned were not enough
to communicate with them, and in any case it was clear that they would
take no orders from him. He was trapped like a bird in the fowler's
hands. Escape was folly, for in an hour their swift horses would have
ridden him down. He had thought he had grown old, but the indignity woke
his youth again, and he fretted passionately. If death was his portion,
he longed for it to come cleanly in soldier fashion.
One night his squire disappeared. The Tartars, when he tried to question
them, only laughed and pointed westward. That was the last he heard of
the lad from the Boulonnais.
And then on a frosty dawn, when the sun rose red-rimmed over the
barrens, he noted a new trimness in his escort. They rode in line, and
they rode before and behind him, so that his captivity was made patent.
On a ridge far to the west he saw a great castle, and he knew the palace
of Houlagou. His guess had been right; he had been brought back by a
circuit to his starting-point.
Presently he was face to face with the Ilkhan, who was hunting. The
Greek scribe was with him, so the meeting had been foreseen. The King's
face was dark with the weather and his stony eyes had a glow in them.
“O messenger of France,” he said, “there is a little custom of our
people that I had forgotten. When a stranger warrior visits us it is our
fashion to pit him in a bout against one of our own folk, so that if he
leaves us alive he may speak well of his entertainment.”
“I am willing,” said Aimery. “I have but my sword for weapon.”
“We have no lack of swordsmen,” said the Ilkhan. “I would fain see the
Frankish way of it.”
A man stepped out from the ring, a great square fellow shorter by a head
than Aimery, and with a nose that showed there was Saracen blood in him.
He had a heavy German blade, better suited for fighting on horseback
than on foot. He had no buckler, and no armour save a headpiece, so the
combatants were fairly matched.
It was a contest of speed and deftness against a giant's strength, for
a blow from the great weapon would have cut deep into a man's vitals.
Aimery was weary and unpractised, but the clash of steel gave life to
him. He found that he had a formidable foe, but one who lacked the finer
arts of the swordsman. The Tartar wasted his strength in the air against
the new French parries and guards, though he drew first blood and gashed
his opponent's left arm. Aimery's light blade dazzled his eyes, and
presently when breath had grown short claimed its due. A deft cut on the
shoulder paralysed the Tartar's sword arm, and a breaststroke brought
him to his knees.
“Finish him,” said the Ilkhan.
“Nay, sire,” said Aimery, “it is not our custom to slay a disabled foe.”
Houlagou nodded to one of his guards, who advanced swinging his sword.
The defeated man seemed to know his fate, and stretched out his neck.
With a single blow his head rolled on the earth.
“You have some skill of the sword, Frenchman,” said the Ilkhan. “Hear,
now, what I have decreed concerning you. I will have none of this
journey to my brother Kublai. I had purposed to slay you, for you have
defied my majesty. You sought to travel to Cathay instead of bearing my
commands forthwith to your little King. But I am loath to kill so stout
a warrior. Swear to me allegiance, and you shall ride with me against
the Caliphs.”
“And if I refuse?” Aimery asked.
“Then you die ere sundown.”
“I am an envoy, sire, from a brother majesty, and of such it is the
custom to respect the persons.”
“Tush!” said the Ilkhan, “there is no brother majesty save Kublai.
Between us we rule the world.”
“Hear me, then,” said Aimery. The duel had swept all cobwebs from his
brain and doubts from his heart. “I am a knight of the Sire Christ and
of the most noble King Louis, and I can own no other lord. Do your work,
King. I am solitary among your myriads, but you cannot bend me.”
“So be it,” said Houlagou.
“I ask two boons as one about to die. Let me fall in battle against your
warriors. And let me spend the hours till sundown alone, for I would
prepare myself for my journey.”
“So be it,” said Houlagou, and turned to his hounds.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The damoiseau of Beaumanoir sat on a ridge commanding for fifty miles
the snow-sprinkled uplands. The hum of the Tartars came faint from a
hollow to the west, but where he sat he was in quiet and alone.
He had forgotten the ache of loss which had preyed on him.... His youth
had not been squandered. The joy of young manhood which had been always
like a tune in his heart had risen to a nobler song. For now, as it
seemed to him, he stood beside his King, and had found a throne in the
desert. Alone among all Christian men he had carried the Cross to a
new world, and had been judged worthy to walk in the footprints of his
captain Christ. A great gladness and a great humility possessed him.
He had ridden beyond the ken of his own folk, and no tale of his end
would ever be told in that northern hall of his when the hearth-fire
flickered on the rafters. That seemed small loss, for they would know
that he had ridden the King's path, and that can have but the one
ending.... Most clear in his memory now were the grey towers by Canche,
where all day long the slow river made a singing among the reeds. He saw
Alix his wife, the sun on her hair, playing in the close with his little
Philip. Even now in the pleasant autumn weather that curly-pate would be
scrambling in the orchard for the ripe apples which his mother rolled to
him. He had thought himself born for a high destiny. Well, that destiny
had been accomplished. He would not die, but live in the son of his
body, and his sacrifice would be eternally a spirit moving in the hearts
of his seed. He saw the thing clear and sharp, as if in a magic glass.
There was a long road before the house of Beaumanoir, and on the extreme
horizon a great brightness.
Now he remembered that he had always known it, known it even when his
head had been busy with ardent hopes. He had loved life and had won life
everlasting. He had known it when he sought learning from wise books.
When he kept watch by his armour in the Abbey church of Corbie and
questioned wistfully the darkness, that was the answer he had got. In
the morning, when he had knelt in snow-white linen and crimson and steel
before the high altar and received back his sword from God, the message
had been whispered to his heart. In the June dawn when, barefoot, he was
given the pilgrim's staff and entered on his southern journey, he had
had a premonition of his goal. But now what had been dim, like a
shadow in a mirror, was as clear as the colours in a painted psaltery.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he sighed, as his King was wont to sigh. For he
was crossing the ramparts of the secret city.
He tried to take the ring from his finger that he might bury it, for it
irked him that his father's jewel should fall to his enemies. But the
wound had swollen his left hand, and he could not move the ring.
He was looking westward, for that way lay the Holy Places, and likewise
Alix and Picardy. His minutes were few now, for he heard the bridles of
the guards, as they closed in to carry him to his last fight.... He had
with him a fragment of rye-cake and beside him on the ridge was a little
spring. In his helmet he filled a draught, and ate a morsel. For, by the
grace of the Church to the knight in extremity, he was now sealed of the
priesthood, and partook of the mystic body and blood of his Lord....
Somewhere far off there was a grass fire licking the hills, and the sun
was setting in fierce scarlet and gold. The hollow of the sky seemed
a vast chapel ablaze with lights, like the lifting of the Host at
Candlemas.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The tale is not finished. For, as it chanced, one Maffeo of Venice,
a merchant who had strayed to the court of Cambaluc and found favour
there, was sent by Kublai the next year on a mission to Europe, and his
way lay through the camp of Houlagou. He was received with honour, and
shown the riches of the Tartar armies. Among other things he heard of a
Frankish knight who had fallen in battle with Houlagou's champions,
and won much honour, they said, having slain three. He was shown the
shrivelled arm of this knight, with a gold ring on the third finger.
Maffeo was a man of sentiment, and begged for and was given the poor
fragment, meaning to accord it burial in consecrated ground when he
should arrive in Europe. He travelled to Bussorah, whence he came by sea
to Venice. Now at Venice there presently arrived the Count of St. Pol
with a company of Frenchmen, bound on a mission to the Emperor. Maffeo,
of whom one may still read in the book of Messer Marco Polo, was become
a famous man in the city, and strangers resorted to his house to hear
his tales and see his treasures. From him St. Pol learned of the dead
knight, and, reading the cognisance on the ring, knew the fate of his
friend. On his return journey he bore the relic to Louis at Paris,
who venerated it as the limb of a saint; and thereafter took it to
Beaumanoir, where the Lady Alix kissed it with proud tears. The arm in
a rich casket she buried below the chapel altar, and the ring she wore
till her death.