Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Merrily rang the gay, glad bells, and blithely swelled up the bridal chorus as they collected on the little green before the ancient arch, and slowly filed into the precincts of the forest shrine; but very speedily their merriment was changed into dismay and terror and despair, for scarcely had they passed into the sacred building, before the knight, with his dark followers, leaped into their saddles, and thundering down the hill at a tremendous gallop, surrounded the chapel before the inmates had even time to think of any danger. It was a strange, wild contrast, the venerable priest within pronouncing even then the nuptial blessing, and proclaiming over the bright young pair the union made by God, which thenceforth no man should dissever--the tearful happiness of the blushing bride, the serious gladness of the stalwart husband, the kneeling peasantry, the wreaths of innocent flowers; and at the gate, the stern, dark men-at-arms, with their scarred savage features, and their gold-gleaming harness and raised weapons. A loud shriek burst from the lips of the sweet girl, as, lifting her eyes to the sudden clang and clatter that harbingered those dread intruders, she saw and recognised upon the instant the fiercest of the Norman tyrants--dreaded by all his neighbors far and near, but most by the most virtuous and young and lovely--the bold, bad baron of Maltravers. He bounded to the earth as he reached the door, and three of his followers leaped from their horses likewise, one sitting motionless in his war-saddle, and holding the four chargers. “Hold, priest!” he shouted, as he entered, “forbear this mummery; and thou, dog Saxon, think not that charms like these are destined to be clasped in rapture by any arms of thy slow, slavish race!” and with these words he strode up to the altar, seemingly fearless of the least resistance, while his men kept the door with brandished weapons. Mute terror seized on all, paralyzed utterly by the dread interruption--on all but the bold priest and the stout bridegroom.

“Nay, rather forbear thou, Alberic de Maltravers! These two are one for ever--wo be to those who part them!”

“Tush, priest--tush, fool!” sneered the fierce baron, as he seized him by the arm, and swinging him back rudely, advanced upon the terrified and weeping girl, who was now clinging to the very rails of the high altar, trusting, poor wretch, that some respect for that sanctity of place which in old times had awed even heathens, might now prevail with one whom no respect for anything divine or human had ever yet deterred from doing his unholy will.

“Ha! dog!” cried he, in fiercer tones, that filled the chapel as it were a trumpet, seeing the Saxon bridegroom lift up a heavy quarter-staff which lay beside him, and step in quietly but very resolutely in defence of his lovely wife--“Ha! dog and slave, dare you resist a Norman and a noble?--back, serf, or die the death!” and he raised his huge mace to strike him.

“No serf, sir, nor slave either,” answered the Saxon, firmly, “but a freeman, by my good master’s gift, and a landholder.”

“Well, master freeman and landholder,” replied the other, with a bitter sneer, “if such names please you better, stand back--for Marian lies on no bed but mine this night--stand back, before worse come of it!”

“I will die rather,” was the answer.--“Then die! fool! die!” shouted the furious Norman, and with the words he struck full at the bare brow of the dauntless Saxon with his tremendous mace--it fell, and with dint that would have crushed the strongest helmet into a thousand splinters--it fell, but by a dexterous slight the yeoman swung his quarter-staff across the blow, and parried its direction, although the tough ash-pole burst into fifty shivers--it fell upon the carved rails of the altar and smashed them into atoms; but while the knight, who had been somewhat staggered by the impetus of his own misdirected blow, was striving to recover himself, the young man sprang upon him, and grappling him by the throat, gained a short-lived advantage. Short-lived it was indeed, and perilous to him that gained--for although there were men enough in the chapel, all armed with quarter staves, and one or two with the genuine brown bill, to have overpowered the four Normans, despite their war array--yet so completely were they overcome by consternation, that not one moved a step to aid him; the priest, who had alone showed any spark of courage, being impeded by the shrieking women, who, clinging to the hem of his vestments, implored him for the love of God to save them.

In an instant that fierce grapple was at an end, for in the twinkling of an eye, two of the men-at-arms had rushed upon him and dragged him off their lord.

“Now by the splendor of God’s brow,” shouted the enraged knight, “thou art a sweet dog thus to brave thy masters. Nay, harm him not. Raoul”--he went on--“harm not the poor dog,”--as his follower had raised his battle-axe to brain him--“harm him not, else we should raise the ire of that fool, Mortemar! Drag him out--tie him to the nearest tree, and this good priest beside him--before his eyes we will console this fair one.” And with these words he seized the trembling girl, forcing her from the altar, and encircling her slender waist in the foul clasp of his licentious arms. “And ye,” he went on, lashing himself into fury as he continued,--“and ye churl Saxons, hence!--hence dogs and harlots to your kennels!”

No farther words were needed, for his orders were obeyed by his own men with the speed of light, and the Saxons overjoyed to escape on any terms, rushed in a confused mass out of the desecrated shrine, and fled in all directions, fearful of farther outrage. Meanwhile, despite the struggles of the youth, and the excommunicating anathemas which the priest showered upon their heads, the men-at-arms bound them securely to the oak-trees, and then mounting their horses, sat laughing at their impotent resistance, while with a refinement of brutality worthy of actual fiends, Alberic de Maltravers bore the sweet wife clasped to his iron breast, up to the very face of her outraged, helpless husband, and tearing open all her jerkin, displayed to the broad light the whole of her white, panting bosom, and poured from his foul, fiery lips a flood of lustful kisses on her mouth, neck, and bosom, under the very eyes of his tortured victim. To what new outrage he might have next proceeded, must remain ever doubtful, for at this very instant the long and mellow blast of a clearly-winded bugle came swelling through the forest succeeded by the bay of several bloodhounds, and the loud, ringing gallop of many fast approaching.

“Ha!” shouted he, “ten thousand curses on him! here comes De Mortemar. Quick--quick--away! Here, Raoul, take the girl, buckle her tight to your back with the sword-belt, and give me your twohanded blade; I lost my mace in the chapel!--That’s right! quick! man--that’s right--now, then, be off--ride for your life--straight to the castle; we will stop all pursuit. Fare thee well, sweet one, for a while--we will conclude hereafter what we have now commenced so fairly!”

And as he spoke, he also mounted his strong charger, and while the man, Raoul, dashed his spurs rowel-deep into his horse’s flanks, and went off at a thundering gallop, the other four followed him at a slower pace, leaving the Saxons in redoubled anguish--redoubled by the near hope of rescue.

But for once villany was not permitted to escape due retribution, for ere the men-at-arms, who led the flight, had crossed the little bridge, a gallant train came up at a light canter from the wood, twenty or thirty archers, all with their long bows bent, and their arrows notched and ready, with twice as many foresters on foot, with hounds of every kind, in slips and leashes, and at their head a man of as noble presence as ever graced a court or reined a charger. He was clad in a plain hunting-frock of forest-green, with a black velvet bonnet and a heron’s plume, and wore no other weapon but a light hunting-sword--but close behind him rode two pages, bearing his knightly lance with its long pennon, his blazoned shield, and his two-handed broadsword. It was that brave and noble Norman, Sir Hugh de Mortemar. His quick eye in an instant took in the whole of the confused scene before him, and understood it on the instant.

“Alberic de Maltravers!” he cried, in a voice clear and loud as the call of a silver trumpet, “before God he shall rue it,” and with the words he snatched his lance from the page, and dashing spurs into his splendid Spanish charger, thundered his orders out with the rapid rush of a winter’s torrent. “Bend your bows, archers,--draw home your arrows to the head! stand, thou foul ravisher, dishonest Norman, false gentleman, and recreant knight! Stand on the instant, or we shoot! Cut loose the yeoman from the tree, ye varlets, and the good priest. Randal, cast loose the bloodhounds down to the bridge across yon knoll, and lay them on the track of that flying scoundrel. Ha! they will meet us.”

And so in truth they did; for seeing that he could not escape the deadly archery, Alberic de Maltravers wheeled short on his pursuers, and shouted his war-cry--“Saint Paul for Alberic!--false knight and liar in your throat. Saint Paul! Saint Paul! charge home,”--and with the words the steel-clad men-at-arms drove on, expecting by the weight of their harness to ride down and scatter the light archery like chaff. Unarmed although he was, De Mortemar paused not--not for a moment!--but galloped in his green doublet as gallantly upon his foe as though he had been sheathed in steel. He had but one advantage--but one hope!--to bear his iron-clad opponent down at the lance point, without closing--on! they came, on!--Maltravers swinging his twohanded sword aloft, and trusting in his mail to turn the lance’s point--De Mortemar with his long spear in rest--“Saint Paul! Saint Paul!”--they met! the dust surged up in a dense cloud! the very earth appeared to shake beneath their feet!--but not a moment was the conflict doubtful. Deep! deep! throughed his linked mail, and through his leathern jerkin, and through his writhing flesh, the grinded spear-head shove into his bosom, and came out at his back, the ash-staff breaking in the wound. Down he went, horse and man!--and down, at one close volley of the gray goose shafts, down went his three companions!--one shot clear through the brain by an unerring shaft--the others stunned and bruised, their horses both slain under them. “Secure them,” shouted Hugh, “bind them both hand and foot, and follow,”--and he paused not to look upon his slain assailant, but galloped down the hill, followed by half his train, the bloodhounds giving tongue fiercely, and already gaining on the fugitive. It was a fearful race, but quickly over!--for though the man-at-arms spurred desperately on, his heavy Norman horse, oppressed, moreover, by his double load, had not a chance in competing with the proud Andalusian of De Mortemar. Desperately he spurred on--but now the savage hounds were up with him--they rushed full at the horse’s throat and bore him to the earth--another moment, Raoul was a bound captive, and Marian, rescued by her liege lord, and wrapped in his own mantle, was clasped in the fond arms of her husband!

“How now, good priest,” exclaimed Sir Hugh, “are these two now fast wedded?”

“As fast, fair sire, as the holy rites may wed them.”

“Then ring me, thou knave, Ringan, a death-peal! Thou, Gilbert, and thou, Launcelot, make me three halters, quick--nay! four--the dead knight shall swing, as his villany well merits, beside the living knaves!--Sing me a death-chant, priest, for these are judged to death, unhouselled and unshriven!”

Not a word did the ruffians answer, they knew that prayer was useless, and with dark frowning brows, and dauntless bearing, they met their fate, impenitent and fearless. For Marian begged their lives in vain. De Mortemar was pitiless in his just wrath! And the spurs were hacked from the heels of the dead knight, and the base halter twisted round his cold neck, and his dishonored corpse hung up upon the very tree to which he had bade bind the Saxon bridegroom. And the death-peals were sung, and the death-hymn was chanted; and ere the sounds of either had died away in the forest echoes, the three marauders writhed out their villain souls in the mild air, and swung three grim and ghastly monuments of a foul crime and fearful retribution--and this dread rite consummated the Saxon’s bridal!

LEGENDS

OF

THE CRUSADERS.

THE SYRIAN LADY;

A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

“Yes, love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But heaven itself descends in love.”--THE GIAOUR.

There is something in the first approach of spring--in the budding of the young leaves, the freshness increasing warmth and lustre of the sun--as contrasted with the gloomy winter which has just departed, that can not fail to awaken ideas of a gay and lively character in all hearts accessible to the influences of gratitude and love. In compliance, as it were, with this feeling, a custom has more or less generally prevailed among all nations, and in all ages, of celebrating the arrival of this season by merriment, and song, and rural triumph. Like many others, admirable practices of the olden time, the setting apart to joy and innocent festivity of the first of May is now gradually falling into neglect; but at the period of which we are about to treat, not Christmas itself could be observed with more reverential care than its inviting rival. On May-day, the evergreens which had decked the cottage and the church, the castle and the cloister, gave way to garlands of such flowers as the mellowing influences of the season had already called into their existence of beauty and perfume; troops of morris-dancers paraded the public way with their fantastic dresses, glittering blades, and intricate evolutions; feasting and wassail, without which even pleasure itself was then deemed incomplete, prevailed on every side; in the crowded city, or in the secluded valley; in the hut of the serf, or in the turreted keep of his warlike lord; in the gloom of the convent, or in the glitter of the court, the same feelings were excited, the same animation glowed in every countenance, the same triumphant demonstrations of joy hailed the glad harbinger of sunshine and of summer.

In England, above all other lands--the merry England of antiquity--was this pleasing festival peculiarly dear to all classes of society; at all times a period eagerly anticipated, and rapturously enjoyed, never perhaps was its arrival celebrated by all men with wilder revelry, with more enthusiastic happiness, than on the year which had accomplished the deliverance of their lion-hearted monarch from the chains of perfidious Austria. It seemed to the whole nation as though, not only the actual winter of the year, with his dark accompaniments of snow and storm, but the yet more oppressive winter of anarchy and misrule, of usurpation and tyranny, were about to pass away from the people, which had so long groaned under the griping sway of the bad John, or been torn by the savage strife of his mercenary barons; while their legitimate and honored sovereign was dragging his dreary hours along in the dungeon, from which he had but now escaped, through the devoted fidelity and unrivalled art of the minstrel Blondel.

Now, however, the king was on the throne of his fathers, girt with a circle of three gallant spirits, who had shed their blood like water on the thirsty deserts of Syria; earning not only earthly honor and renown, but, as their imperfect faith had taught them to believe, the far more lofty guerdon of eternal life. Now their national festival had returned--they were called upon by the thousand voices of nature to give the rein to Pleasure, and why should they turn a deaf ear to her inspiring call?

The streets of London--widely different indeed from the vast wilderness of walls, which has risen like a phœnix from the ashes of its predecessor, but even at that early age a vast and flourishing town--were thronged, from the earliest dawn, by a constant succession of smiling faces: old and young, men and maidens, grave citizens and stern soldiers, all yielding to the excitement of the moment, all hurrying from the intricate lanes of the city to greet their king, who had announced his intention of holding a court at Westminster, and proceeding thence, at high noon, to feast with the city dignitaries in Guild-hall. The open stalls, which then occupied the place of shops, were adorned by a display of their richest wares, decorated with wreaths of a thousand bright colors;--steel harness from the forges of Milan; rich velvets from the looms of Genoa; drinking-cups and ewers of embossed gold, glittered in every booth. The projecting galleries, which thrust forward their irregular gables far across the narrow streets, were hung with tapestries of price; while garlands of flowers, stretched from side to side, and the profusion of hawthorn boughs, with their light green leaves and snowy blossoms, lent a sylvan appearance to the crowded haunts of the metropolis. From space to space the streets were guarded by the city-watch in their white cassocks and glittering head-pieces; while ever and anon the train of some great lord came winding its way, with led horses in costly caparison, squires and pages in the most gorgeous fashion of the day, the banner and the knightly armor of the baron borne before him, from his lodgings in the Minories, or the more notorious Chepe. The air was literally alive with music and light laughter; even the shaven and cowled monk, as he threaded his way through the motley concourse--suffered the gravity of his brow to relax into a smile when he looked upon the undisguised delight of some fair girl, escorted by her trusty bachelor; now stopping to gaze on the foreign curiosities displayed in decorated stalls; now starting in affected terror from the tramp and snort of the proud war-horse, or mustering a frown of indignation at the unlicensed salutation of its courtly rider; now laughing with unsuppressed glee at the strange antics of the _mummers_ and _morricers_, who, in every disguise that fancy could suggest, danced and tumbled through the crowded ways--heedless of the disturbance they excited, or the danger they incurred from the hoofs of chargers which were prancing along in constant succession, to display the equestrian graces and firm seat of some young aspirant for the honors of chivalry.

The whole scene was in the highest degree picturesque, and such as no other age of the world could afford. The happiness which, although fleeting and fictitious, threw its bright illumination over the whole multitude, oblivious of the cares, the labors, and the sorrows of to-morrow, afforded a subject for the harp of the poet, no less worthy his inspired meditations than the gorgeous coloring and the rich costume of the middle ages might lend to the pencil of a Leslie or a Newton.

In a chamber overlooking with its Gothic casements this scene of contagious mirth--alone, unmoved by the gay hum which told of happiness in every passing breeze--borne down, as it would appear, by the weight of some secret calamity--sat Sir Gilbert à-Becket, of glorious form and unblemished fame. The bravest of the brave on the battle-plain, unequalled for wisdom in the hall of council, he had been among the first of those bold hearts who had buckled on their mighty armor to fight the good fight of Christianity--to rear the cross above the crescent--and to redeem the Savior’s sepulchre from the contaminating sway of the unbeliever.

There was not one among the gallant thousands who had followed their lion-hearted leader from the green vales of England to the sultry sands of Palestine, whose high qualities had been more frequently tried, or whose undaunted valor was more generally acknowledged, than the knight à-Becket; there was not one to whose lance the chivalrous Richard looked more confidently for support, nor one to whose counsel he more willingly inclined his ear. In the last desperate effort before the walls of Ascalon--when, with thirty knights alone, the English monarch had defied the concentrated powers, and vainly sought an opponent in the ranks of sixty thousand mussulmans--his crest had shone the foremost in those fierce encounters which have rendered the name of the Melec Ric a terror to the tribes of the desert that has endured even to the present day. It was at the close of this bloody encounter, that, conquered by his own previous exertions rather than by the prowess of his foemen--his armor hacked and rent, his war-steed slain beneath him--he had been overwhelmed by numbers while wielding his tremendous blade beside the bridle-rein of his king, and borne away by the Saracens into hopeless captivity.

Days and months had rolled onward, and the limbs of the champion were wasted and his constitution sapped by the vile repose of the dungeon; yet never for an instant had his proud demeanor altered, or his high spirit quailed beneath the prospect of an endless slavery. All means had been resorted to by his turbaned captors to induce him to adopt the creed of Mohammed. Threat of torments such as was scarcely endured even by the martyrs of old; promises of dominion, and wealth, and honor; the agonies of thirst and hunger; the allurement of beauty almost superhuman--had been brought to assail the faith of the despairing but undaunted prisoner: and each temptation had been tried but to prove how unflinching was his resolution, and how implicit his faith in that Rock of Ages which he had ever served with enthusiastic, at least, if erring zeal, and with a fervency of love which no peril could shake, no pleasure could seduce from its serene fidelity.

At length, when hope itself was almost dead within his breast; when ransom after ransom had been vainly offered; when the noblest moslem captives had been tendered in exchange for his inestimable head; and, to crown the whole, when the no-longer united powers of the crusading league had departed from the shores on which they had lavished so much of their best blood--his deliverance from the fetters of the infidel was accomplished by one of those extraordinary circumstances which the world calls chance, but which the Christian knows how to attribute to the infinite mercies of an overruling Providence. The eagerness of the politic sultan--whose name ranks as high among the tribes of Islam as the glory of his opponents among the pale sons of Europe--to obtain proselytes from the nations which he had the sagacity to perceive were no less superior to the wandering hordes of the desert in arts than in arms, had led him to break through those laws which are so intimately connected with the religion of Mohammed--the laws of the harem! As the pious faith of the western warrior appeared to gain fresh vigor from every succeeding temptation, so did the anxiety of his conqueror increase to gain over to his cause a spirit the value of which was daily rendered more and more conspicuous. In order to bring about this end, after every other device had failed, he commanded the admission to the Briton’s cell of the fairest maiden of his harem--a maid whose pure and spotless beauty went further to prove her unblemished descent than even the titles which were assigned to the youthful Leila, of almost royal birth.

Dazzled by her charms, and intoxicated by the fascination of her manner, her artless wit, and her delicate timidity, so far removed from the unbridled passion of such other eastern beauties as had visited his solitude, the Christian soldier betrayed such evident delight in listening to her soft words, and such keen anxiety for a repetition of the interview, that the oriental monarch believed that he had in sooth prevailed. Confidently, however, as he had calculated on the conversion of the believing husband by the unbelieving wife, the bare possibility of an opposite result had never once occurred to his distorted vision. But truly has it been said, “_Magna est veritas et prævalebit!_” The damsel who had been sent to create emotion in the breast of another, was the first to become its victim herself: she whose tutored tongue was to have won the prisoner from the faith of his fathers, was herself the first to fall away from the creed of her race. Enamored, beyond the reach of description, of the good knight, whose attractions of person were no less superior to the boasted beauty of the oriental nobles, than his rich and enthusiastic mind soared above their prejudiced understandings, she had surrendered her whole soul to a passion as intense as the heat of her native climate; she had lent a willing ear to the fervid eloquence of her beloved, and had drank in fresh passion from the very language which had won her reason from the debasing superstitions of Islamism to the bright and everlasting splendors of the Christian faith. From this moment the eastern maid became the bride of his affections, the solace of his weary hours, the object of his brightest hopes. He had discovered that she was worthy of his love; he was sure that her whole being was devoted to his welfare; and he struggled no longer against the spirit with which he had battled, as unworthy his country, his name, and his religion.

It was not long ere the converted maiden had planned the escape, and actually effected the deliverance, of her affianced lover. She had sworn to join him in his flight; she had promised to accompany him to his distant country, and to be the star of his ascendant destinies, as she had been the sole illuminator to his hours of desolation and despair.

Rescued from his fetters, he had lain in concealment on the rocky shores of the Mediterranean, anxiously awaiting the vessel which was to convey him to the land of his birth, and her whose society alone could render his being supportable. The vessel arrived: but what was the agony of his soul on learning that she whom he prized above light, and life, and all save virtue, had fallen a sacrifice to the furious disappointment of her indignant countrymen! Maddened with grief, and careless of an existence which had now become a burden rather than a treasure, he would have returned to avenge the wrongs of his lost Leila, and perish on her grave, had not her emissaries--conscious that in such a case the fate which had befallen the mistress must undoubtedly be theirs likewise--compelled him to secure their common safety by flight.

After weary wanderings, he had returned a heart-stricken wretch to his native England, at that moment rejoicing with unfeigned delight at the recovery of her heroic king. He sometimes mingled in the labors of the council or the luxuries of the banquet, but it was evident to all that his mind was far away! that for him there might indeed be the external semblance of joy, but that all within was dark and miserable! It was plain that, in the words of the poet--

“That heavy chill had frozen o’er the fountains of the tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears.”

On this morning of universal joy--to him a period fraught with the gloomiest recollections, for it was the anniversary of that sad day on which he had parted from the idol of his heart, never to behold her more!--on this morning he had secluded himself from the sight of men; he was alone with his memory! His eyes indeed rested on the letters of an illuminated missal which lay open before him; but the long, dark lock of silky hair which was grasped in his feverish hand, showed too plainly that his grief was still of that harrowing and fiery character which prevents the mind from tasting as yet the consolations of Divine truth. He had sat thus for hours, unconscious of the passing multitude, whose every sound was borne to his unheeding ears by the fresh breeze of spring. His courtly robe and plumed bonnet, his collar, spurs, and sword, lay beside him, arranged for the approaching festival by his officious page; but no effort could have strung his nerves or hardened his heart on that day to bear with the frivolous ceremonies and false glitter of a court. He recked not now whether his presence would lend a zest to the festival, or whether his absence might be construed into offence. The warrior, the politician, the man, were merged in the lover! Utter despondency had fallen upon his spirit. Like the oak of his native forests, he was proud and unchanged in appearance, but the worm was busy at his heart. Even tears would have been a relief to the dead weight of despair which had benumbed his very soul; but never, since that fatal hour, had one drop relieved the aching of his brain, or one smile gleamed across his haggard features. Mechanically he fulfilled his part in society: he moved, he spoke, he acted, like his fellow-men; but he was now become, from the most ardent and impetuous of his kind, a mere creature of habit and circumstance.

So deeply was he now absorbed in his dark reveries, that the increasing clamor of the multitude had escaped his attention, although the character of the sounds was no longer that of unmingled pleasure. The voices of men, harsh and pitched in an unnatural key, rude oaths, and tumultuous confusion, proclaimed that, if not engaged in actual violence, the mob was at least ripe for mischief. More than once, during the continuance of these turbulent sounds, had the plaintive accents of a female voice been distinctly audible--when on a sudden a shriek arose of such fearful import, close beneath the casements of the abstracted baron, that it thrilled to his very heart. It seemed to his excited fancy that the notes of a well-remembered voice lent their music to that long-drawn cry; nay, he almost imagined that his own name was indistinctly blended in that yell of fear.

With the speed of light he had sprung to his feet, and hurried to the lattice; but twice before he reached it, had the cry repeated, calling on the name of “Gilbert!” with a plaintive energy that could no longer be mistaken. He gained the embrasure, dashed the trellised blinds apart, and there--struggling in the licentious grasp of the retainers who ministered to the brutal will of some haughty noble--her raven tresses scattered to the winds of heaven, her turbaned shawl and flowing caftan rent and disordered by the rude hands of lawless violence--he beheld a female form of unrivalled symmetry, clad in the well-remembered garments of the East. Her face was turned from him, and the dark masses of hair which had escaped from their confinement entirely concealed her features; still there was an undefined resemblance which acted so keenly upon his feelings, that the thunder of heaven could scarcely burst with a more appalling crash above the heads of the guilty than did the powerful tones of the crusader as he bade them, “as they valued life, release the damsel!” With a rapid shudder which ran through every limb at his clear summons, she turned her head. It was--it was his own lost Leila! the high and polished brow; the eyes that rivalled in languor the boasted organs of the wild gazelle; the rapturous ecstasy that kindled every lineament as she recognised her lover’s form--

----“the voice that clove through all the din,
As a lute’s pierceth through the cymbal’s clash,
Jarred but not drowned by the loud brattling”--

were all, all Leila’s! To snatch his sword from its scabbard, to vault at a single bound from the lofty casement, to force his way through the disordered press, to level her audacious assailants to the earth, was but a moment’s work for the gigantic power of the knight, animated as he now was by all those feelings which can minister valor to the most timid, and give strength to the feeblest arm! He beheld her whom he had believed to be snatched for ever from his heart, nor could hundreds of mail-clad soldiers have withstood his furious onset! He had already clasped his recovered treasure in one nervous arm, while with the other he brandished aloft the trusty blade, which had so often carried havoc and terror to the centre of the moslem lines; when the multitude, enraged at the interference of a stranger with what to them appeared the laudable occupation of persecuting a witch or infidel, seconded by the bold ruffians who had first laid hand upon the lovely foreigner, rushed bodily onward, threatening to overpower all resistance by the weight of numbers.

Gallantly, however, and at the same time mercifully, did Sir Gilbert à-Becket support his previous reputation. Dealing sweeping blows with his huge falchion on every side, yet shunning to use the point or edge, he had cleft his way in safety to the threshold of his own door. Yet even then the final issue of the strife was far from certain; for so sudden had been the exit of the baron, and from so unusual an outlet, that none of his household were conscious of their lord’s absence, and the massy portal was closed against the entrance of the lawful owner. Stones and staves flew thick around him; and so fiercely did the leaders of the furious mob press upon his retreat, that, yielding at length to the dictates of his excited spirit, he dealt the foremost a blow which would have cloven him to the teeth though he had been fenced in triple steel; thundering at the same time with his booted heel against the oaken leaves of his paternal gate, and shouting to page and squire within till the vaulted passages rang forth in startled echoes.

At this critical moment the din of martial music, which had long been approaching, heralded the royal procession; though so actively were the rioters engaged in their desperate onset, and so totally engrossed was the baron in the rescue of his recovered bride, that neither party were aware of it until its clangor rang close at hand, and a dazzling cavalcade of knights and nobles came slowly on the scene of action.

Of stature almost gigantic, noble features, and kingly bearing--his garb glittering with gold and jewels till the dazzled eye could scarcely brook its splendor; backing a steed which seemed as though its strength and spirit might have borne Goliath to the field; and wielding a blade which no other arm in Christendom could have poised even for a second--the lion-hearted Richard, followed by every noble of his realm, dashed with his native impetuosity into the centre.

“Ha! St. George!” he shouted, in a voice heard clearly above the mingled clang of instruments and the tumult of the conflict; “have ye no better way to keep our festival than thus to take base odds on one? Shame on ye, vile recreants! What, ho!” he cried, as he recognised the person of the knight, “our good comrade à-Becket thus hard bestead! Hence to your kennels, ye curs of England!--dare ye match yourselves against the Lion and his brood?”

Loud rang the acclamations of the throng, accustomed to the blunt boldness of their warrior-king, and losing sight of his haughty language in joy for his return and admiration of the additional glory which had accrued to the whole nation from the prowess of its champion: “God save thee, gallant lion-heart! Never was so brave a knight! never so noble a king!”

Louder still was the wonder of the monarch and his assembled court when they learned the strange adventure which had been brought to so fair a conclusion by their unexpected succor. The lady threatened with the lasting indignation of the royal Saladin, though never really in danger of life, had devised the false report of her own death--knowing that it were hopeless for her to dream of flight, so long as the eyes of all were concentrated on her in dark and angry suspicion; and knowing also that no dread of instant dissolution nor hope of liberty could have induced her devoted lover to have quitted the land while she remained in “durance vile.”

When the first excitement--caused by the escape of a prisoner so highly esteemed as was the bold crusader--had ceased to agitate the mussulman divan, and affairs had returned to their usual course--easily escaping from the vigilance of the harem guard, she had made good her flight to the seabathed towers of Venice, and thence to the classic plains of Italy. Then it was that the loneliness of her situation, the perils, the toils, the miseries which she must necessarily endure, weighed no less heavily on her tender spirits, than the unwonted labor of so toilsome a journey on her delicate and youthful frame. Ignorant of any European language, save the name of her lover, and the metropolis of his far-distant country, her sole reply to every query was the repetition, in her musical, although imperfect accents, of the words--“London,” “Gilbert.” Marvellous it is to relate--and were it not, in good sooth, history too marvellous--that her talismanic speech did at length convey her through nations hostile to her race, through the almost uninhabited forest, and across the snowy barrier of the Alps, through realms laid waste by relentless banditti, and cities teeming with licentious and merciless adventurers, to the chalky cliffs and verdant meadows of England! For weeks had she wandered through the streets of the vast metropolis, jeered by the cruel, and pitied, but unaided, by the merciful--tempted by the wicked, and shunned by the virtuous--repeating ever and anon her simple exclamation, “Gilbert, Gilbert!” till her strength was well nigh exhausted, and her spirits were fast sinking into utter despondency and despair.

On the morning of the festival she had gone forth with hopes renewed, when she perceived the concourse of nobles crowding to greet their king--for she knew her Gilbert to be high in rank and favor--and fervently did she trust that this day would be the termination of her miseries. Again was she miserably deceived; so miserably that, perchance, had not the very assault which had threatened her with death or degradation restored her, as it were by magic, to the arms of him whom she had so tenderly and truly loved, she had sunk that night beneath the pressure of grief and anxiety, too poignant to be long endured. But so it was not ordained by that perfect Providence, which, though it may for a time suffer bold vice to triumph, and humble innocence to mourn, can ever bring real good out of seeming evil; and whose judgments are so inevitably, in the end, judgments of mercy and of truth, that well might the minstrel king declare of old, in the inspired language of holy writ--

“I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”

THE TRIALS OF A TEMPLAR;

A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

“The Lord is on my side; I will not fear what can man do unto me.”

PSALM cxviii. 6.

A summer-day in Syria was rapidly drawing toward its close, as a handful of European cavalry, easily recognised by their flat-topped helmets, cumbrous hauberks, and chargers sheathed like their riders, in plate and mail, were toiling their weary way through the deep sand of the desert, scorched almost to the heat of molten lead by the intolerable glare of an eastern sun. Insignificant in numbers, but high of heart, confident from repeated success, elated with enthusiastic valor, and inspiriting sense of a holy cause, they followed the guidance of their leader, one of the best and most tried lances of the temple, careless whither, and secure of triumph; their steel armor glowing like burnished gold, their lance-heads flashing in the level rays of the setting orb, and the party-colored banner of the Beauseant hanging motionless in the still atmosphere.

Before them lay an interminable waste of bare and dusty plain, broken into long swells succeeding each other in monotonous regularity, though occasionally varied by stunted patches of thorny shrubs and dwarf palm-trees. As they wheeled round one of these thickets, their commander halted suddenly at the sight of some fifty horsemen, whose fluttering garb and turbaned crowns, as well as the springy pace of their Arab steeds, proclaimed them natives of the soil, winding along the bottom of the valley beneath him, with the stealthy silence of prowling tigers. Although the enemy nearly trebled his own force in numerical power, without a moment’s hesitation Albert of Vermandois arrayed his little band, and before the infidels had even discovered his presence, much less drawn a blade, or concentrated their scattered line, the dreaded war-cry rung upon their ears--“Ha! Beauseant! for the temple! for the temple!” and down thundered the irresistible charge of the western crusaders on their unguarded flank. Not an instant did the Saracens withstand the brunt of the Norman lance; they broke away on all sides, leaving a score of their companions stretched to rise no more on the bloody plain. Scarcely, however, had the victors checked their blown horses, or reorganized their phalanx, disordered by the hot struggle, when the distant clang of cymbal, horn, and kettle-drum mingled with the shrill _lelies_ of the heathen sounding in every direction, announced that their march had been anticipated, their route beset, themselves surrounded. Hastily taking possession of the vantage-ground afforded by an abrupt hillock, and dismissing the lightest of his party to ride for life to the Christian camp, and demand immediate aid, Albert awaited the onset with the stern composure which springs from self-possession. A few minutes sufficed to show the Christians the extent of their embarrassment, and the imminence of their peril. Three heavy masses of cavalry were approaching them from as many different quarters; their gaudy turbans, gilded arms, and waving pennons of a hundred hues, blazing in marked contrast to the stern and martial simplicity of the iron soldiers of the west. To the quick eye of Albert it was instantly evident that their hope consisted in protracting the conflict till the arrival of succor; and even this hope was diminished by the unwonted velocity with which the Mohammedans hurried to the attack. It seemed as if they also were aware that, in order to conquer, they must conquer quickly; for, contrary to their usual mode of fighting, they charged resolutely upon the very lances of the motionless Christians, who, in a solid circle, opposed their mailed breasts in firm array to their volatile antagonists. Fiercely, however, as they charged, their lighter coursers recoiled before the bone and weight of the European war-steeds. The lances of the crusaders were shivered in the onset; but to the thrust of these succeeded the deadly sweep of the twohanded swords, flashing above the cimeters of the infidel with the sway of some terrific engine. Time after time the eastern warriors rushed on, time after time they retreated, like the surf from some lonely rock on which it has wasted its thunders in vain. At length they changed their plan, and wheeling in rapid circles, poured their arrows in as fast, and for a time as fruitlessly, as the snowstorm of a December day. On they came again, right upon the point where Vermandois was posted, headed by a tall chieftain, distinguished no less by his gorgeous arms than by his gallant bearing. Rising in his stirrups, when at a few paces distance, he hurled his long javelin full in the face of the crusader. Bending his crest to the saddle-bow, as the dart passed harmlessly over him, Albert cast his massive battle-axe in return. The tremendous missile rustled past the chief at whom it was aimed, and smote his shield-bearer to the earth, at the very moment when an arrow pierced the templar’s charger through the eyeball to the brain. The animal, frantic with the pain, bounded forward and rolled lifeless, bearing his rider with him to the ground; yet even in that last struggle the stern knight clave the turbaned leader down to the teeth before he fell. Five hundred horse dashed over him--his array was broken--his companions were hewn from their saddles, even before their commander was snatched from beneath the trampling hoofs, disarmed, fettered, and reserved for a doom to which the fate of his comrades had been a boon of mercy. Satisfied with their success, and aware that a few hours at the farthest must bring up the rescue from the Christian army, the Saracens retreated as rapidly as they had advanced; all night long they travelled with unabated speed toward their inaccessible fastnesses, in the recesses of their wild mountains. Arrived at their encampment, the prisoner was cast into a dungeon hewn from the living rock. Day after day rolled heavily on, and Albert lay in utter darkness, ignorant of his destiny, unvisited by any being except the swart and bearded savage who brought the daily pittance, scarcely sufficient for the wants of his wretched existence.

Albert of Vermandois, a Burgundian youth of high nobility, and yet more exalted renown, had left his native land stung almost to madness by the early death of her to whom he had vowed his affections, and whose name he had already made “glorious by his sword,” from the banks of the Danube to the pillars of Hercules. He had bound the cross upon his breast, he had mortified all worldly desires, all earthly passions, beneath the strict rule of his order. While yet in the flush and pride of manhood, before a gray hair had streaked his dark locks, or a single line wrinkled his lofty brow, he had changed his nature, his heart, his very being; he had attained a height of dignity and fame scarcely equalled by the best and noblest warriors of the temple. The vigor of his arm, the vast scope of his political foresight, no less than the unimpeached rigor of his morals, had long rendered him a glory to his brotherhood, a cause of terror and an engine of defeat to the Saracen lords of the Holy Land. Many a league had been formed to overpower, many a dark plot hatched to inveigle him; but so invariably had he borne down all odds in open warfare before his irresistible lance, so certainly had he hurled back all secret treasons with redoubled vengeance on the heads of the schemers, that he was almost deemed the possessor of some cabalistic spell, framed for the downfall and destruction of the sons of Islam.

Deep were the consultations of the infidel leaders concerning the destiny of their formidable captive. The slaughter actually wrought by his hand had been so fearful, the ravages produced among their armies by his policy so unbounded, that a large majority were in favor of his instant execution; nor could human ingenuity devise, or brute cruelty perform, more hellish methods of torture than were calmly discussed in that infuriate assembly.

It was late on the third day of his captivity, when the hinges of his dungeon-grate creaked, and a broader glare streamed through the aperture than had hitherto disclosed the secrets of his prisonhouse. The red light streamed from a lamp in the grasp of a dark figure--an imaum, known by his high cap of lambskin, his loose black robes, his parchment cincture, figured with Arabic characters, and the long beard that flowed even below his girdle in unrestrained luxuriance. A negro, bearing food of a better quality, and the beverage abhorred by the prophet, the forbidden juice of the grape, followed--his ivory teeth and the livid circles of his eyes glittering with a ghastly whiteness in the clear lamp-light. He arranged the unaccustomed dainties on the rocky floor: the slave withdrew. The priest seated himself so that the light should reveal every change of the templar’s features, while his own were veiled in deep shadow.

“Arise, young Nazarene,” he said, “arise and eat, for to-morrow thou shalt die. Eat, drink, and let thy soul be strengthened to bear thy doom; for as surely as there is one God, and one prophet, which is Mohammed, so surely is the black wing of Azrael outstretched above thee!”

“It is well,” was the unmoved reply. “I am a consecrated knight, and how should a templar tremble?--a Christian, and how should a follower of Jesus fear to die?”

“My brother hath spoken wisely, yet is his wisdom but folly. Truly hast thou said, ‘It is well to die;’ for is it not written that the faithful and the yaoor must alike go hence? But is it the same thing for a warrior to fall amid the flutter of banners and the flourish of trumpets--which are to the strong man even as the breath of his nostrils, or as the mild shower in seedtime to the thirsty plain--and to perish by inches afar from his comrades, surrounded by tribes to whom the very name of his race is a by-word and a scorn?”

“Now, by the blessed light of heaven!” cried the indignant soldier, “rather shouldst thou say a terror and a ruin; for when have the dogs endured the waving of our pennons or the flash of our armor? But it skills not talking--leave me, priest, for I abhor thy creed, as I despise thy loathsome impostor!”

For a short space the wise man of the tribes was silent; he gazed intently on the countenance of his foeman, but not a sign of wavering or dismay could his keen eye trace in the stern and haughty features. “Allah Acbar,” he said at length; “to God all things are possible: would the Christian live?”

“All men would live, and I am but a man,” returned the knight; “yet, praise be to Him where all praise is due, I have never shrunk from death in the field, nor can he fright me on the scaffold. If my Master has need of his servant, he who had power to deliver Israel from bondage, and Daniel from the jaws of the lion, surely he shall deliver my soul from the power of the dog. And if he has appointed for me the crown of martyrdom, it shall ne’er be said that Albert of Vermandois was deaf to the will of the God of battles and the Lord of hosts.”

“The wise man hath said,” replied the slow, musical notes of the priest, in strange contrast to the fiery zeal of the prisoner--“the wise man hath said, ‘Better is the cottage that standeth firm than the tower which tottereth to its fall.’ Will my brother hear reason? Cast away the cross from thy breast, bind the turban upon thy brow, and behold thou shalt be as a prince among our people!”

“Peace, blasphemer! I spit at thee--I despise, I defy thee! I, a worshipper of the living Jehovah, shall I debase myself to the camel-driver of Mecca? Peace! begone!” He turned his face to the wall, folded his arms upon his chest, and was silent. No entreaties, no threats of torment, no promises of mercy, could induce him again to open his lips. His eyes were fixed as if they beheld some shape, unseen by others; his brow was calm, and, but for a slight expression of scorn about the muscles of the mouth, he might have passed for a visionary.

After a time, the imaum arose, quitted the cell, and the warrior was again alone. But a harder trial was yet before him. The door of his prison opened yet once more, and a form entered--a being whom the poets in her own land of minstrelsey would have described under the types of a young date-tree, bowing its graceful head to the breath of evening; of a pure spring in the burning desert; of a gazelle, bounding over the unshaken herbage; of a dove, gliding on the wings of the morning! And of a truth she was lovely: her jetty hair braided above her transparent brow, and floating in a veil of curls over her shoulders; her large eyes swimming in liquid languor; and, above all, that indescribable charm--

“The mind, the music breathing from her face”--

her form slighter and more sylph-like than the maids of Europe can boast, yet rounded into the fairest mould of female beauty--all combined to make up a creature resembling rather a houri of Mohammed’s paradise than

“One of earth’s least earthly daughters.”

For a moment the templar gazed, as if he doubted whether he were not looking upon one of those spirits which are said to have assailed and almost shaken the sanctity of many a holy anchorite. His heart, for the first time in many years, throbbed wildly. He bowed his head between his knees, and prayed fervently; nor did he again raise his eyes, till a voice, as harmonious as the breathing of a lute, addressed him in the lingua-Franca:--

“If the sight of his hand-maiden is offensive to the eyes of the Nazarene, she will depart as she came, in sorrow.”