dog was out with a dagger and fell on him! The Prince's arm being raised, caught the stroke, you see; and that moment his foot was up,' said John, acting the kick, 'and down went the rogue upon his back! And I-I threw myself right down over him!'
'Did you, my brave little fellow? Well done of you!' cried Richard.
'And the Prince wrested the dagger out of the rogue's hand, only he tore his own forehead sorely, as the point flew up with the shock- and then stabbed the villain to the heart-see how the blood rushed over me! Then the Prince pulled me up, and called me a brave lad, and set me on my feet, and asked me if I were sure I was not hurt. And by that time the archers were coming in, when all was over; and Long Robin must needs snatch up a joint stool and have a stroke at the Moor's head. I trow the Prince was wrath with the cowardly clown for striking a dead man. He said I alone had been any aid!'
''Well?' anxiously asked Richard, gathering intense alarm as he saw that the boy's trouble still exceeded his elation, even at such commendation as this.
'But then,' said John sadly, 'even while he called it nothing, there came a dizziness over him. And even then the Princess had heard the outcry, and came in haste with Dame Idonea. And so soon as the Dame had picked up the dagger and looked well at it, and smelt it, she said there was poison on it. No sooner did the Princess hear that, than, without one word, she put her lips to his arm to suck forth the venom. He was for withholding her, but the Dame said that was the only safeguard for his life; and she looked-oh, so imploring!'
'Blessings on the sweet Princess and true wife!' cried the men-at- arms, great numbers of whom had gathered round the little eye-witness to hear his account.
'And so is he saved?' said Richard, with a long breath.
'Ah! but,' said John, his eyes beginning to fill with tears, 'there is the Grand Master of the Templars come now, and he says that to suck the poison is of no avail; and that nothing will save him but cutting away the living flesh as I would carve the wing of a bustard; and Dame Idonea says that is just the way King Coeur de Lion died, and the Princess is weeping, and the wound will not stop bleeding; and Hamlyn is gone to Acre for a surgeon, and they are all wrangling, and Dame Idonea boxed my ears at last, and said I was gaping there.' The boy absolutely burst into sobs and tears, and at the same moment a growl arose among the archers, of 'Curses on the Moslem hounds! Not one shall escape! Death to every captive in our hands!'
'Nay, nay,' exclaimed Richard, looking up in horror; 'the poor captives are utterly guiltless! Far more justly make me suffer,' murmured he sadly.
'All tarred with the same stick,' said the nearest; 'serve them as they deserve.'
'Think,' added Richard, 'if the Prince would see no dishonour done to the dead carcase of the murderer himself, would he be willing to have ill worked on living men, sackless of the wrong? English turning butchers-that were fit work for Paynims.'
'No, no, not one shall live to laugh at our Edward's fall,' burst out the men; and a voice among them added, 'Sure the young squire seems to know a vast deal about the guilty and the guiltless-the Montfort! Ay! Away with all foes to our Edward-'
'Best withdraw yourself, Sir,' said Hob Longbow; 'their blood is up. Baulk them of their prey, and they will set on you next.'
Richard just then beheld a person from whose interposition he had much greater hopes, namely the Earl of Gloucester, who, though still a young man, was the chief English noble in the camp, and whose special charge the Saracen captives were. He hurried towards him, and asked tidings of the Prince.
'Ill tidings, I trow,' said the Earl, bitterly. 'Ay, Richard de Montfort, you had best take heed to yourself, he was your best friend; and a sore lookout it is for us all. Between the old dotard his father and the poor babes his children, England is in woeful plight. Would that your father's wits were among us still! There's some curse on this fools' errand of a Crusade, for here is the sixth prince it hath slain, and well if we lose not our Princess too. But what is all this uproar!'
'The men-at-arms, my Lord,' said Richard, 'fierce to visit the crime on the captives.'
'A good riddance!' said Earl Gilbert; 'the miscreants eat as much as ten score yeomen, and my knaves are weary with guarding them. If this matter brings all the pagans in Palestine on our hands, we shall have enough to do without looking after this nest of heathens.'
'But would the Prince have it so?'
'I fear me the Prince is like to have little will in the matter! No, no, I'm not the man to order a butchery, but if the honest fellows must needs shed blood for blood, I'm not going to meddle between them and the heathen wolves.'
Assuredly nothing was to be done with the Red de Clare, and Richard pushed on, with throbbing dismayed heart, to the tent, dreading to behold the condition of him whom he best loved and honoured on earth. The tent was crowded, but Richard's unusual height enabled him to see, over the heads of those nearest, that Edward was sitting on the edge of his couch, his wife and Dame Idonea endeavouring to check the flow of blood from his wound. The elbow of his other arm was on his knee, and his head on his hand, but the opening of the curtain let in the light; he looked up, and Richard saw how deathly white his face had become, and the streaks of blood from the scratch upon his brow. He greeted Richard, however, with the look of recognition to which his young squire had now become used-not exactly a smile, but a well-satisfied welcome; and though he spoke low and feebly to his brother who stood near him, Richard caught the words with a thrill of emotion.
'Let him near me, Edmund. He hath a ready hand, and may aid thee, sweet wife. Thou art wearying thyself.' Then, as Richard approached, 'Thou hast sped well! I looked not for thee so soon.'
'Alack, my Lord!' said Richard, 'I hurried on to warn you. Ah! would I had been in time!'
'Thy little pupil, John, did all man could do,' said Edward, languidly smiling. 'But what-hast aught in charge to say to me? Be brief, for I am strangely dizzy.'
'My Lord,' said Richard, 'the archers and men-at-arms are furiously wrath with the Saracens. They would wreak their vengeance on the prisoners, who at least are guiltless!'
'The knaves!' exclaimed Edward promptly. 'Why looks not Gloucester to this?'
'My Lord, the Earl saith that he would not command the slaughter, but that he will not forbid it.'
'Saints and angels!' burst forth the Prince, and to the amazement of all, he started at once on his feet, and striding through the bystanders to the opening of the tent, he looked out on the crowd, who were already rushing towards the inclosure where their victims were penned. Raising his mighty voice as in a battle-day, he called aloud to them to halt, turn back, and hear him. They turned, and beheld the lofty form in the entrance of the tent, wrapped in a long loose robe, which, as well as his hair, was profusely stained with blood, his wan face, however, making that marble dignity and sternness of his even more awful and majestic as he spoke aloud. 'So, men, you would have me go down to my grave blood-stained and accursed by the death of guiltless captives? And I pray you, what is to be the lot of our countrymen, now on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, if you thus deal with our prisoners, taken in war? Senseless bloody- minded hounds that ye are, mark my words. The life of one of you for the life of a Saracen captive; and should I die, I lay my curse on ye all, if every man of them be not set free the hour my last breath is drawn. Do you hear me, ye cravens?'
Unsparing, unconciliatory as ever, even when most merciful and generous, Edward turned, but reeled as he re-entered the tent, and his dizziness recurring, needed the support of both his brother and Richard to lay him down on the couch.
The Grand Master of the Temple renewed his assurance that this was a token of the poison, and Eleanor was unheeded when she declared that her dear lord had been affected in the same manner before his wound, ever since indeed the Whit Sunday when he had ridden home from the great Church of St. John of Acre in the full heat of the sun.
Dame Idonea was muttering the mediaeval equivalent for fiddlesticks, as plain as her respect for the Temple would allow her.
At that moment the leech whom Hamlyn had been sent into the town to summon, made his appearance, and fully confirmed the Templar's opinion. Neither the wizened Greek physician, nor the dignified Templar, considered the soft but piteous assurance of the wife that the venom had at once been removed by her own lips as more than mere feminine folly, and Dame Idonea's real experience of knights thus saved, and on the other hand of the fatal consequences of rude surgery in such a climate, were disregarded as an old woman's babble. Her voice waxed shrill and angry, and her antagonists' replies in Lingua Franca, mixed with Arabic, Latin, and Greek, rang through the tent, till the Prince could bear it no longer.
