HOW THEY SLEW THE FIRST INFIDEL
Richard and Mary made the toilsome journey across Lombardy and
Dalmatia with trials enough to expiate many sins, before Count
Raymond's host reached Constantinople. There also Emperor Alexius gave
the Crusaders chill greeting, and earned many curses. Yet when Richard
saw the riches of the "City guarded of God," and heard how the first
hordes, led by Peter the Hermit and Walter Lackpenny, had lighted like
locusts on its suburbs, and had sacked palace and church as though
despoiling very infidels, Longsword did not marvel that Alexius
thought needful to deal warily with later comers. Here for the first
time he learned the fate of the first peasant hordes,--how, to save
his city from ruin, Alexius had ferried them across the Bosphorus.
Left then to the Turks' tender mercies, the Sultan of Nicæa had
pounced upon them with his light cavalry and cut them short in their
sins. Peter the Hermit had escaped to Constantinople; his followers
had perished almost to a man; and so began the great outpouring of
life-blood in the long agony of the Crusade.
Small wonder Alexius Comnenus saw in his later guests doubtful friends
or worse! Or that with all his matchless guile he sought pledges from
them, that their coming might bring blessing rather than destruction
to his empire; for the blunt Franks openly swore that the schismatic
Greeks were but one degree better than Moslems. So day followed day of
intrigue and lie-giving; the Augustus bickering and haggling with
Raymond, Godfrey, and the other Latin chiefs. In the meantime Richard
had time to learn the marvels of this great city of the Cæsars. What
city like it! Palermo had not one tithe its wealth. Its walls might
mock all the chivalry of France. Where in the West was one building so
notable as were a score along the Mesa, the great street from the
"Golden Gate" to the "Sacred Palace"? Everywhere Corinthian columns,
veined marbles, bronzes that nigh seemed breathing, palaces, churches
a hundred and more; great _fora_ where swelled a mighty traffic;
merchants whose shops boasted the luxurious wares of Persia, China,
Ind; and multitudes on every street--Greek, Bulgar, Russian, Armenian,
Jew. To Richard the scene was for long an enchanted confusion; and he
marvelled to see how to Mary the pomp and bustle alike came as the
common course of life. When he rode at her side through the humming
city, or felt the light bark spring under the oar, as they shot up the
Golden Horn or toward Chrysopolis, he was fain to question how any one
here born and bred could find joy in coarser, wilder Frankland.
Together the two had been in St. Sophia, monarch of churches, had seen
the great dome swimming on its sea of light above its forty windows;
had heard the choir sing as angels the praise of "Mary, God-bearer,
Giver of Victory." And Richard's soul had been almost carried aloft by
the throb of the stately service. Again in the street, he said: "Dear
life, I feel as if I were but just plucked down from heaven. What have
I done that you love me so; that you can so cheerfully leave all this,
and dwell with me in our rude, bare West?" And Mary, as she rode
beside him, answered, smiling: "Why? And can one live forever in the
great church, and eat and drink music? Is all life a rowing from
Chalcedon to Prinkipo? Ah, Richard, could I be happy to spend my days
after the manner of these ladies of Constantinople,--watched like cats
by sleek eunuchs, and kept close that our masters may stroke us? Is it
better to listen to the music of St. Sophia and to read Sophocles and
Herodotus; or to ride, hawk on fist, over the merry country with you
at my side, to feel the wild wind tossing my hair, to sniff the
breeze in the free woods, and think how sweet a thing is life?"
"Then you are true Frank at heart!" laughed her husband, "despite your
Greek name and learning."
"I am the wife of Richard de St. Julien," answered she, very
seriously; "and he is a mighty baron of France."
So they viewed the great city through each other's eyes, and Richard
grew humble as he saw how much wit heaven had granted those Greeks he
once despised. At last the negotiating ended; the Emperor came down
from his dignity; the princes swore him a loose manner of fealty;
Bohemond of Tarentum, the most covetous of the chiefs, abated his
demands. On a day never to be forgotten, the imperial galleys bore the
host across the narrow strait. "Asia!" the cry of each knight as he
kissed the very soil; at last they were fairly set to go to Jerusalem!
And now the all-reigning desire was to slay infidels. Not many leagues
away lay a great paynim stronghold, Nicæa, capital of Kilidge Arslan,
sultan of Roum,--with fighting promised of a right knightly kind.
Merry the music, and merrier the hearts of the hundred thousands, that
May season, as the host swept in flashing steel and unsoiled bleaunts
past old Nicomedia under the blue Bithynian sky, the hills all bright
and green in springtime glory.
"Sure, Our Lord is with us!" cried Richard. "I feel a giant's
strength!" But Sebastian plodded on with bowed head. "Boast not," was
the reply; "for our sins we all may yet be sorely chastened."
"But is not God on our side, father?"
"Yes, truly; but it shall be even as with the band of Gideon. Of
thirty and two thousand there were left to fall on the Midianites
three hundred; and to be among these, may we be worthy!"
At this Richard laughed, looking off to the long lines of bright
hauberks and forests of lances, far as the eye could reach; yet he had
not laughed, had he known that of the six hundred thousand of
fighting-men that crossed into Asia, scarce fifty thousand were to see
with mortal eye the Holy City. But for the moment the skies seemed
very bright, and the shadows commenced creeping only when forth from
the forest stole ragged wretches, nigh starving, refugees from Peter
the Hermit's rout. These told how Kilidge Arslan had slaughtered man,
woman, and child, when he stormed the camp of Walter Lackpenny. Then,
when the host advanced a little farther, they came to a wide heap of
bones, more than could be counted, bleaching in the sun, and the crows
still a black cloud above; for here had been the first battle and the
first defeat. Loud rose the oaths and threats of vengeance from
peasant and baron; the lines advanced in closer array, the music
lessened, every lance was ready; for now at last they were treading on
the soil of the infidel.
Richard Longsword rode with the three thousand pioneers that Duke
Godfrey sent ahead to plant crosses by the wayside as guides to the
hosts who came after. Thus it befell, the saints granted that he
should be among the first knights to set eyes on the unbelievers. With
Prince Tancred, Bohemond's valiant nephew,--who had not forgotten the
lists at Palermo,--Richard saw a band of horsemen whizzing ahead, and,
lo, as the Christian riders drew near, the Turks' little crooked bows
began spitting out barbed arrows, which glanced harmlessly on the
chain mail, but now and then wounded a horse. "Rash infidels,--singled
out doubtless by Satan for destruction,"--so Prince Tancred cried when
he couched his lance; and away went the whole squadron of knights. The
Seljouks wheeled like lightning, and were off; their bony Tartar
horses flew madly under the spur, while the men, bending dexterously
in their saddles, launched their shafts. But destruction was upon
them; the Christians rode them down one after another; some were
lanced, some taken; a few escaped, howling in a truly devilish
fashion, to tell the tale to their fellow-unbelievers. It had been so
easy for the cavaliers, that they rallied one another on the prowess
of the day.
"Ha! De St. Julien," Tancred would cry,--"how many paladins have you
slain?" And Richard would answer, "As many as you, fair lord; but who
is this grand soldan you have strapped to your stirrup? Will he fetch
a thousand byzants' ransom?"
They brought the luckless prisoners into camp, and scarce knew what to
do with them. Shock-headed, small-eyed fellows they were,--all bones,
teeth, and sinew. None could speak their language. Raymond of Agiles,
worthy chaplain, stood before them with a crucifix, and discoursed an
hour long in Latin on the perilous state of their souls, hoping that
some word of the truth might lodge in their hearts through a miracle
of grace. But the wretches only blinked out of their little eyes, and
never moved a muscle nor gave a sign on their stolid faces. Theroulde
advised that, following Charlemagne's precept, they should be put to
death.
"None of the Moslems did remain
But had turned Christian, or else was slain!"
prattled he, jauntily; but Sebastian counselled that due time for
repentance should not be denied them. "Let them be as the men of
Gibeon," he recommended, "hewers of wood and drawers of water." So the
poor Turks were suffered to live, and Mary Kurkuas sent one of her
maids to the tent where they lay bound, with cordials for such as were
wounded. Many good Christians frowned at this, and Count Pons of
Balazan hinted to Richard he would do well to rebuke his wife; "it was
not seemly to have pity on God's enemies." But Richard belched out a
great oath. "By St. Michael, who saveth from peril, he who bids me
rebuke the Baroness de St. Julien shall walk up the length of
Trenchefer!" and Count Pons, who was a discreet man, had to plead no
desire for a quarrel, remembering the fate of the Valmonts.
Thus tamely the Holy War began; but on the sixth of May the army found
itself under the walls of Nicæa--an infidel city now, but forever
sacred to Christians, since here had been framed the great Creed. The
knights laughed at sight of its lofty battlements, as promising
doughty fighting, and sat down for the siege, awaiting the coming of
Raymond from Constantinople. While the siege-engines made the firm
rock quake with the attack, Richard and the other barons rode forth
into the country seeking adventure; for Kilidge Arslan was sending
down his light riders from the hills, and there was steady
skirmishing. Each morning as Richard went abroad he looked back at the
face of Mary--the lips smiling, but not the eyes; and each evening
when Rollo lumbered wearily homeward--perhaps with his lord's target
battered deeply--there would be laughter, kisses, and merry talk, as
they sat before the camp-fire, saw the red flames weaving pictures,
and Longsword told of the brave deeds of the day.
So sped two weeks around Nicæa, and on a Friday Richard sallied forth
in company with Bohemond and Tancred, who led the scouting party. As
their troops climbed the foothills that lay south of the city, the
eagle eyes of Tancred lit upon three men who were stealing from grove
to grove, as if wishing anything rather than to be seen. Then there
was a headlong race among the knights to see which would strike first,
and Rollo tossed out his great hoofs and led them all. Thus Richard
caught the three just as they were plunging in a thicket, and bade
them stand and yield. One indeed made a bold break for freedom, but
just as he dashed among the trees, Tancred's javelin smote him, and
his fellows held up their hands and howled for quarter. When the two
were fairly on the way back to camp Richard observed that one was a
Seljouk, but the other--a brown, black-eyed, wiry-limbed fellow--cried
out in Arabic when addressed: "Ah, Christ be praised! I am amongst
Christians; mercy, kind lord, on a fellow-believer,--release these
bands!" "Christian?" protested Richard, still holding the cord knotted
round the prisoner's hands.
"I call Our Lord to witness," exclaimed the captive, "I am a baptized
Christian of Syria, and have endured captivity and persecution for the
sake of the Gospel;" and at this he cast down his eyes and began to
sigh.
"Our Lady pity you!" cried all the knights, touched to the quick
instantly; "and how came you with these two infidels?"
"Ah! noble lords," declared the Arab, a great tear on each cheek, "I
have been long captive among the unbelievers, the slave of Kilidge
Arslan. Know that on Sunday the Sultan will fall upon you with all his
host, and we three are messengers sent to bear the tidings into the
city through your lines."
"Fellow! fellow!" began Tancred, pricking up his ears, "a Christian,
and yet the private messenger of the infidels?"
"Yes, Cid," was the ready answer, "I have, alas!"--another great
sigh--"been false to my faith and apostatized; yet I said in my heart,
'Let me go with these messengers, and by betraying them to the Franks,
undo my own sin and gain liberty among Christian people.'"
"By St. Theodore," swore Tancred, "you speak smoothly; if it is as you
say, you shall not go unrewarded, and Bishop Adhemar shall give you
full absolution."
"Even so, Cid," replied the Arab, whose hands Richard had set at
liberty, but who made no effort to fly. "Put to torture this Turk, my
companion; he will confess all that I have told."
"You are a stout-limbed varlet," commented Bohemond, the sly-eyed
Prince of Tarentum; "you shall serve with me in my suite as guide and
interpreter, for language and country you must know well." But the
Arab only bowed, and answered:--
"My lord is a fountain of generosity, yet it is my desire to seek
service with the husband of that very noble lady the Princess Mary
Kurkuas, who it is told is the great emir, Richard Longsword."
"St. Michael," burst out Richard, "I am he! Yet why do you call my
wife by name?"
The stranger salaamed almost to the dust.
"God is gracious beyond my sins in granting so noble a lord as husband
of the daughter of my dear master. Know that fifteen years past,
before the Moslems took Antioch, I was house-servant to Manuel
Kurkuas, 'domestic' of Syria. Oftentimes have I held the very august
princess on my knee, and even in her childhood all declared she was of
beauty passing St. Thecla."
Richard had only to hear one praise Mary Kurkuas to become that man's
friend straightway. And he put his hand on the hilt of Trenchefer,
taking oath upon the relics that if the stranger, who called himself
Hossein, told an honest tale, he should never lack a patron. Only
Tancred, viewing the Arab with his sea-green eyes, was heard to
remark, "This fellow invokes the saints glibly, but his faith has more
profession in it than is to my liking."
However, when they brought the two before Duke Godfrey and threatened
the Turk with torture, he broke down and told the interpreter a tale
exactly like Hossein's--that Kilidge Arslan waited in the mountains
with a great host and would fall on the besiegers the next day. So the
Arab's credit was high when Richard brought him to the tent of his
wife. Hossein cast one glance upon her, and fell upon his knees,
kissing her robe and crying:--
"Praises, praises to St. John of Damascus! I behold the daughter of my
beloved lord Manuel, and God has verily clothed her as an angel of
light!"
"Good man," said the Greek, a little confused, "I know you not. When
have you served my father?"
"O preëminently august lady!" broke forth the Arab again. "Do you not
remember Hossein, who was in the Cæsar Manuel's palace at Antioch? How
he told you the tales of his people and sang you the wondrous song of
Antar, and the stories of the jinns and the spirits of the air?"
"I was indeed in Antioch when my father ruled the city, but I was very
young. I recall nothing," replied Mary.
"Alas! I had hopes your memory had not failed," declared Hossein,
still kneeling; "yet it is true, O noblest of the Greeks, you were
very young. Enough; my devotion can repay the daughter what I owe to
the father. For the most excellent Cæsar saved me from cruel death at
the hands of the infidels, my fellow-countrymen."
"You are an honorable man," said the lady, touched at his
demonstration, "to discharge a debt incurred so long ago.
Perhaps"--and she ran over all her early girlhood in her memory--"I
recall something of you, yet my father had many servants. I crave
pardon if I forget. And how have you fared all this while among the
Turks?"
Whereupon Hossein flew into the most pitiful tale as to his life of
captivity and persecution, so that the lady's eyes grew wet, and her
heart right sore.
"Good Christian," said she, at last, "surely you have endured much for
your faith. God grant that under like persecution I do not apostatize
more deeply. And what may I do for you? Have you home, friends, kin?"
"Alas! most august princess, Heaven has taken all away. Let me be your
slave, your bodyguard, and sleep without your tent by night with a
naked sword. Perilous times await, and"--here he choked in his
speech--"the foe shall only touch you by stepping across my poor
body!"
"You are a noble and pious man," said Mary, smiling. "It shall be as
you say. I will ask the Baron to make you my guardsman." Whereupon
Hossein invoked all the saints of the calendar to witness his delight;
and the princess had her varlets and maids clothe and feed him. When
Herbert and Theroulde came to look at him, however, they wagged their
heads; and Sylvana, the nurse, who went wherever her mistress went,
came boldly to Mary, saying:--
"Save for his pious talk, we all swear this man is infidel. I knew all
your father's servants at Antioch, and he was not of them."
But Mary answered her sharply:--
"Must one have a white skin to love Our Lord? No man could come before
me with such a lie. Your memory fails you. The Cæsar had a great
household. Besides, this Hossein has just revealed all the plots of
Kilidge Arslan, and my husband says he is to be trusted." The word of
Richard Longsword was not to be contradicted before his wife, as
Sylvana knew well; so she held her peace. Only Theroulde arranged with
Herbert that one of them should always watch their lady's tent along
with the suspected Hossein.
But the Arab's revelations proved true to the letter. On the next day,
while Raymond of Toulouse with the rear of the Provençals was making
his way to camp, three huge bands of Seljouk cavalry swooped down on
them and on the forces of Duke Godfrey. Then followed a battle of the
true knightly sort, the Turks trying what they became too wise to
attempt again,--to ride down the Franks in fair onset, with sheer
weight of numbers. Long and fierce the struggle; every Christian chief
proved a paladin. Generalship there was not; every baron and his
knights fought his own little battle with the hordesmen confronting.
Then in the end the surviving Seljouks were driven from the field like
smoke; the heads of their fallen comrades slung into Nicæa by the
engines, forewarning of what awaited the garrison. There were masses
for the Christian dead, the first martyrs; _Te Deums_ for the victory.
Richard Longsword, men cried, had slain as many infidels as Duke
Godfrey's self. When he stood in his bloody hauberk before Mary that
night, she cast her arms about him and kissed him, saying: "O sweet
lord, how beautiful you must be in battle! How God must rejoice in
your holy service!"
"Dear life," answered Longsword, pressing her to his mailed breast,
"it is when I think of the pure saint on earth who is praying for me
that my arm grows strong."
"Then it must be very strong, Richard," said she, with half a laugh,
half a sob, "for I love you more than words may tell; and my prayers
are many and all for you."
So they were glad that evening,--at least all who had not lost a
friend. But when Mary had gone to rest, Herbert talked gravely with
Richard.
"Little lord," said he, affectionately, "put no trust in this Hossein.
The saints are on his tongue, yet he stumbled when Sebastian tried to
make him say the Creed, even in his own Arabic; and Theroulde swears
that to-night when he thought none watched, he knelt toward Mecca in
Moslem fashion, as if to pray, and muttered the incantations of their
Al-Koran."
Richard laughed. "Theroulde smells danger at all times; and Sebastian
thinks, to speak Arabic is to squint toward perdition. Hossein has
revealed a secret which has given the infidels the mightiest stroke
that was theirs since Charlemagne marched to Spain. And yet you accuse
him of being one of them? Have shame for your suspicions on a
persecuted fellow-Christian! Treat him as a brother, and pray that
your own souls be in no greater peril than his."
"Nevertheless--" began Herbert.
"I hear no more," replied his master, abruptly; "I must go to rest. A
cursed story told by Count Renard's _jongleur_ runs in my head;--how
Robert the Norman and his father, King William, once fought hand to
hand, helmets closed, and Robert nigh killed his father ere they knew
one another. St. Michael, what if Musa and I should meet thus! But I
must sleep."
Herbert grumbled long to himself, and Theroulde and he renewed their
vow never to leave Hossein a moment alone to work his own devices.