The Talisman by Walter Scott (important books to read TXT) 📗

“Ha!” exclaimed Richard, his jealousy awakened, giving his mental irritation another direction, “am I forgot by my allies ere I have taken the last sacrament? Do they hold me dead already? But no, no, they are right. And whom do they select as leader of the Christian host?”

“Rank and dignity,” said De Vaux, “point to the King of France.”

“Oh, ay,” answered the English monarch, “Philip of France and Navarre—Denis Mountjoie—his most Christian Majesty! Mouth-filling words these! There is but one risk—that he might mistake the words EN ARRIERE for EN AVANT, and lead us back to Paris, instead of marching to Jerusalem. His politic head has learned by this time that there is more to be gotten by oppressing his feudatories, and pillaging his allies, than fighting with the Turks for the Holy Sepulchre.”

“They might choose the Archduke of Austria,” said De Vaux.

“What! because he is big and burly like thyself, Thomas—nearly as thick-headed, but without thy indifference to danger and carelessness of offence? I tell thee that Austria has in all that mass of flesh no bolder animation than is afforded by the peevishness of a wasp and the courage of a wren. Out upon him! He a leader of chivalry to deeds of glory! Give him a flagon of Rhenish to drink with his besmirched baaren-hauters and lance-knechts.”

“There is the Grand Master of the Templars,” continued the baron, not sorry to keep his master's attention engaged on other topics than his own illness, though at the expense of the characters of prince and potentate. “There is the Grand Master of the Templars,” he continued, “undaunted, skilful, brave in battle, and sage in council, having no separate kingdoms of his own to divert his exertions from the recovery of the Holy Land—what thinks your Majesty of the Master as a general leader of the Christian host?”

“Ha, Beau-Seant?” answered the King. “Oh, no exception can be taken to Brother Giles Amaury; he understands the ordering of a battle, and the fighting in front when it begins. But, Sir Thomas, were it fair to take the Holy Land from the heathen Saladin, so full of all the virtues which may distinguish unchristened man, and give it to Giles Amaury, a worse pagan than himself, an idolater, a devil-worshipper, a necromancer, who practises crimes the most dark and unnatural in the vaults and secret places of abomination and darkness?”

“The Grand Master of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem is not tainted by fame, either with heresy or magic,” said Thomas de Vaux.

“But is he not a sordid miser?” said Richard hastily; “has he not been suspected—ay, more than suspected—of selling to the infidels those advantages which they would never have won by fair force? Tush, man, better give the army to be made merchandise of by Venetian skippers and Lombardy pedlars, than trust it to the Grand Master of St. John.”

“Well, then, I will venture but another guess,” said the Baron de Vaux. “What say you to the gallant Marquis of Montserrat, so wise, so elegant, such a good man-at-arms?”

“Wise?—cunning, you would say,” replied Richard; “elegant in a lady's chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat—who knows not the popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall never be able to guess the hue of his inmost vestments from their outward colours. A man-at-arms? Ay, a fine figure on horseback, and can bear him well in the tilt-yard, and at the barriers, when swords are blunted at point and edge, and spears are tipped with trenchers of wood instead of steel pikes. Wert thou not with me when I said to that same gay Marquis, 'Here we be, three good Christians, and on yonder plain there pricks a band of some threescore Saracens—what say you to charge them briskly? There are but twenty unbelieving miscreants to each true knight.”

“I recollect the Marquis replied,” said De Vaux, “that his limbs were of flesh, not of iron, and that he would rather bear the heart of a man than of a beast, though that beast were the lion, But I see how it is—we shall end where we began, without hope of praying at the Sepulchre until Heaven shall restore King Richard to health.”

At this grave remark Richard burst out into a hearty fit of laughter, the first which he had for some time indulged in. “Why what a thing is conscience,” he said, “that through its means even such a thick-witted northern lord as thou canst bring thy sovereign to confess his folly! It is true that, did they not propose themselves as fit to hold my leading-staff, little should I care for plucking the silken trappings off the puppets thou hast shown me in succession. What concerns it me what fine tinsel robes they swagger in, unless when they are named as rivals in the glorious enterprise to which I have vowed myself? Yes, De Vaux, I confess my weakness, and the wilfulness of my ambition. The Christian camp contains, doubtless, many a better knight than Richard of England, and it would be wise and worthy to assign to the best of them the leading of the host. But,” continued the warlike monarch, raising himself in his bed, and shaking the cover from his head, while his eyes sparkled as they were wont to do on the eve of battle, “were such a knight to plant the banner of the Cross on the Temple of Jerusalem while I was unable to bear my share in the noble task, he should, so soon as I was fit to lay lance in rest, undergo my challenge to mortal combat, for having diminished my fame, and pressed in before to the object of my enterprise. But hark, what trumpets are those at a distance?”

“Those of King Philip, as I guess, my liege,” said the stout Englishman.

“Thou art dull of ear, Thomas,” said the King, endeavouring to start up; “hearest thou not that clash and clang? By Heaven, the Turks are in the camp—I hear their LELIES.” [The war-cries of the Moslemah.]

He again endeavoured to get out of bed, and De Vaux was obliged to exercise his own great strength, and also to summon the assistance of the chamberlains from the inner tent, to restrain him.

“Thou art a false traitor, De Vaux,” said the incensed monarch, when, breathless and exhausted with struggling, he was compelled to submit to superior strength, and to repose in quiet on his couch. “I would I were—I would I were but strong enough to dash thy brains out with my battle-axe!”

“I would you had the strength, my liege,” said De Vaux, “and would even take the risk of its being so employed. The odds would be great in favour of Christendom were Thomas Multon dead and Coeur de Lion himself again.”

“Mine honest faithful servant,” said Richard, extending his hand, which the baron reverentially saluted, “forgive thy master's impatience of mood. It is this burning fever which chides thee, and not thy kind master, Richard of England. But go, I prithee, and bring me word what strangers are in the camp, for these sounds are not of Christendom.”

De Vaux left the pavilion on the errand assigned, and in his absence, which he had resolved should be brief, he charged the chamberlains, pages, and attendants to redouble their attention on their sovereign, with threats of holding them to responsibility, which rather added to than diminished their timid anxiety in the discharge of their duty; for next, perhaps, to the ire of the monarch himself, they dreaded that of the stern