HOW RICHARD FARED TO AUVERGNE
Now when the south wind blew gently with the advancing spring, Richard
set forth for Auvergne. With him went Sebastian, rejoiced to see "that
very Christian country of France," and Herbert his arch-counsellor,
and Nasr with a score of tough Saracens, very fiends as they looked,
Baron William's old retainers, who would have followed the devil with
a stout heart so long as he led to hard blows and good plunder. Just
before he started, Richard was admonished by his father not to rush
into quarrel with Raoul, the brother of Louis, whose lands of Valmont
lay close by St. Julien. "A rough, bearish fellow," William called
him, who had won the name of the "Bull of Valmont" by his headlong
courage. He had broiled with Louis, chased him from the fief, and now
lived alone with his mother, the Lady Ide, and young brother Gilbert.
Just now, report had it, he was at sword's points with the abbot of
Our Lady of St. Julien, who claimed freedom from tolls upon the
Valmont lands, and William warned his son against being used by the
monk to fight his unchurchly quarrel. So Richard promised discretion,
kissed his mother for the last time; and away he went on a stanch
galleon of Amalfi headed for Marseilles, and making Palermo on her
voyage from Alexandria.
A short voyage, too short almost for Richard and Mary, who found even
the evenings grow enchanted, while they sat on the gilded poop
watching the sun creep down into the deep; or listened to the tales of
Theroulde, who set Mary a-laughing when he told of King Julius Cæsar,
and how he built the walls of Constantinople, and wooed the "very
discreet Fée," Morgue, who became his wife. But the joy was rarest to
be alone upon the poop, with the soft breeze crooning in the rigging,
the foam dancing from the beak and trailing behind its snowy pathway
where trod the dying light.
"Ah," said Mary one evening, as the first star twinkled in the deep
violet, "one year it is since I set eyes on you, my Richard; since you
plucked me from the Berbers. In this year I have lost my father, and
gained--you!" And there were both sadness and joy upon her face.
"A year!" quoth Richard, his eyes not upon the stars, but upon a
coronal of brown hair. "How could I ever have lived without you? Since
you have entered into me, my strength waxes twenty-fold. By St.
Michael, I will seek a great adventure to prove it!"
"Do you think to give me joy by risking life at every cross-road to
prove your love? Does a true lover think so meanly of his love, that
he is willing to tear her heart by thrusting his precious self in
peril?"
"No," protested he, taking her right hand in his own, then the other;
and holding both captive in his right, while she laughed and struggled
vainly to get free. "But what do you love in me? The only thing I
have;--an arm that is very heavy. And shall I not use that gift of the
saints? Are there not haughty tyrants with no fear of God in their
hearts, who must be overthrown by a Christian cavalier? Is the world
so good, so free from violence, and wickedness, and strife, that he
who can wield a sword for Christ should let it rust in the scabbard?
You would not have me always in your bower, listening to those Greek
books which I called Churchmen's frippery, until you made them all
music. Only yesterday I heard Sebastian grumble, 'St. Martin forbid
that the princess play the Philistine woman to our Samson, and shear
his locks; so that Holy Church fail of a noble champion!'"
"I will never play the Philistine woman to you, my Richard," answered
Mary, lightly. Then as a sweet and sober light came into her eyes:
"Oh, dear heart, I know well what you must be! It is true the world
is very evil. We are young, and the light shines fair; but there is a
day to dance, and a day, not to mourn, but to put by idle things. You
will be a great man, Richard," with a proud, bright glance into his
face; "men will dread you and your righteous anger against their
wickedness; God will give you mighty deeds to do, great battles to
win, great wrongs to right, and perhaps"--here with another
glance--"they will think you grow hard and sombre, when it is only
because you dare not turn back from your task, but must think of duty,
not of childish things. But I will still be with you; and when you go
away to the wars, as go you must, I will never weep till your banner
is out of sight; and if I do weep, I will still say, as you said, 'It
is no dreadful thing for a brave gentleman to die, if he dies with his
face toward the foe, and his conscience clear.'"
"You will make me a very saint," said Richard, still holding fast her
hands; "but it is by your prayers alone, dear saint, that I may dare
have hope of heaven."
"No," replied the Greek, smiling, "you are not a saint. Oh, you will
do very wrong, I know! But God and Our Lady understand that your heart
is true and pure. It is our souls that go to heaven, not our tongues
with their harsh words, nor our hands with their cruel blows. And when
you are fiercest, and the tempting fiends tear you, and the sky seems
very black, then I will kiss you--so--and you will recollect yourself,
and be my own true cavalier, who wields his sword because the love of
Christ is in his heart."
"But you will not always be with me," protested Richard. "When I am
alone and sorely tempted--what then?"
"Then you must love me so much that my face will be ever before your
eyes; and by this you will know when you strike for Christ, and when
for worldly passion or glory."
"Ah!" cried Richard, "what have I done that God should send down one
of His saints to sit by me, and speak to me, and dwell forever with
me?"
"Forever!" said Mary, lugubriously; "we shall all be in heaven in a
hundred years. How well that there is no marriage nor giving in
marriage there, or some of those lovely saintesses might make eyes at
so fine a warrior-angel as you; then I would wax jealous, and St.
Peter, if he is the peacemaker, might have his wits sore puzzled." But
here soberness left them both, and they laughed and laughed once more;
till Musa and Theroulde, who had discreetly withdrawn to the cabin,
came forth, and the _jongleur_, looking up at the now gleaming
planets, told how wise beldames said, those lights sang a wondrous
melody all night long, and a new-born child heard their music.
Richard was still holding Mary's hands, and she saucily told Musa that
she had begun early those lessons of obedience which her lord would
surely teach her.
"Flower of Greece," laughed the Spaniard, "in Andalusia the women are
our rulers; at their beck palaces rise, wars are declared, peace is
stricken. The king of Seville for his favorite wife once flooded his
palace court with rose water, to satisfy her whim. Come with me to
Spain, not Auvergne."
"No," answered Mary, tugging free her hands and shaking a dainty
sleeve of Cyprian gauze, "we will never turn infidel and peril our
souls--not even to please _you_, Sir Musa."
She saw a dark shadow flit over Musa's face: was it as the ship's
lantern swayed in the slow swell of the sea? But he replied quickly:--
"Alas! I am not such a friend to the lord of Andalusia to-day that I
can proffer there princely hospitality."
Then their talk ran fast on a thousand nothings; but the shadow on
Musa's face haunted Mary. She resolved in her heart, she would never
again remind him that their faith lay as a gulf between them.
* * * * *
The stout ship reached Marseilles, where she was to barter her Eastern
wares for Frankish iron, oil, and wax. Her passengers sped joyously to
La Haye, a rich and stately castle in the pleasant South Country,
where Baron Hardouin, Mary's uncle, received his niece and future
nephew with courtly hospitality, as became a great seigneur of
Provence. And when Richard rode again northward with a lock of brown
hair in his bosom, he had a promise that, when he returned in autumn,
there should be a wedding such as became the heiress of a Greek Cæsar
and a great Baroness of the Languedoc.
Never again was Longsword to ride with fairer visions and a merrier
heart. He was in France, the home of knightly chivalry, of Christian
faith. As they passed through Aix and Avignon and Orange, and all
along the stately Rhone, the wealthy lords and ladies entertained him
in their castles, Theroulde paying by his stories for all the
feastings and wassail. And Richard carried his head high, for the fame
of his deeds in Sicily had run overseas; and men honored him, and the
great countesses gave soft looks and words,--with more perchance, had
he only suffered. "Verily," thought Richard in his heart, "the
_jongleurs_ did well to sing that when King Alexander the Great lay
a-dying, he had only one sorrow,--that he had not conquered France,
head of the whole world." But for the ladies, their troops of
troubadours and their "courts of love," Richard had only pleasant
words, no more. For Longsword had a vision before his eyes that two
years before he had never dreamed. Fairer than all knightly glory, the
sweet delirium of battle, the cry of a thousand heralds proclaiming
him victor, rose the dream of a strong and beautiful woman ever beside
him; her voice ever in his ears, her touch upon his arm, her breath
upon his cheek; and from year unto year his soul drawing to itself joy
and power merely by looking upon her--this was the dream. And Richard
marvelled that once his life had found rest in hawking and sword-play.
So as he rode northward, all the little birds upon the arching trees
sang that one name "Mary"; and the great Rhone, hastening seaward,
murmured it from each eddy and foaming boulder; and the kind west wind
whispered it, as it blew over the pleasant corn-lands of Toulouse and
Aquitaine.
Thus ever toward the north; at last they touched the domain of the
Count of Vaudan close to Auvergne, and near St. Flour they entered
Auvergne itself. Then around them rose the mountains like frozen
billows of the angry North Sea, their jagged summits crowned with
cinder-filled craters; upon their bold flanks patches of basalt, where
clinging pines shook down their needles. On nigh each cliff perched a
castle, black as the rock and as steep; and amid the clefts of the
mountains were little valleys where browsed sure-footed kine; where
the people were rude, rough men, with great beards, leather dresses,
surly speech, and hands that went often to their sword-hilts.
"Sure, it is a wild land I have come to set right!" cried Richard,
gazing at the fire-scarped ranges of _puys_; and he rejoiced at
thought of ordering his grandsire's barony with a strong hand. But
Sebastian again was only gloom and warnings.
"Ah, dear son, how much better to leave your grandfather's petty
seigneury to its fate, and heed the word of holy Peter the Hermit, who
is preaching the war against the infidels."
"Not while Mary Kurkuas lives will I quit her to go to Jerusalem,"
proclaimed Richard, boldly, and Sebastian shook his head, as was his
wont. "'The woman tempted me, and I did eat,'" was his bitter answer;
"God is not mocked; your pride shall yet be dashed utterly."